Health Data Specialist

Health Data Specialist

Location: Richmond, VA 23219

Duration: 6+ months

Shift: 1st Shift

Pay Rate: $35.00 to $48.00 per hour on W2 without benefits

• Monitoring and sharing data related to heat and heat illness can help communities, especially those with the most vulnerable populations, prepare and respond to extreme heat. This position will support heat-related data activities and heat-related public health decision‑making for multiple offices/programs:
• The Office of Family Health Services Division of Population Health Data (DPHD) is responsible for analytic and outreach services within the Office of Family Health Services (OFHS), including epidemiological activities regarding the collection, monitoring, analysis and interpretation of data. The Virginia Environmental Public Health Tracking (EPHT) Program within DPHD provides environmental epidemiology support by collecting, integrating, and analyzing non‑infectious disease and environmental data.
  
  EPHT disseminates data and information on several content areas, including climate/weather. EPHT also provides heat‑related illness datasets to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s Tracking Program for public display and use.
• The Office of Emergency Medical Services (OEMS), Division of System Optimization’s DATAWISE team is responsible for promoting the collection, analysis, and dissemination of high‑quality data to improve the caliber of emergency medical care in Virginia and expand the public’s awareness of the role of EMS in the healthcare delivery system. The OEMS Epidemiology Team reviews, analyzes, and visualizes data coming from Virginia Pre‑hospital Information Bridge (VPHIB) and the Virginia Statewide Trauma Registry (VSTR).
  
  The team performs quality assurance of submitted data to enhance data accuracy and establish best practices for data management; analyzes and summarizes EMS and trauma registry data to answer questions from legislators, academia, and the public; carries out innovative research to support data‑driven and evidence‑based systems that promote and improve patient care quality; and overall applies EMS data to answer public health questions in collaboration with other teams within the Virginia Department of Health.
  
  The OEMS Division of System Optimization’s DATAWISE team ensures heat‑related emergency data is available on the Virginia Open Data Portal and fulfills EMS heat‑related data requests to inform decision‑making.
• The Office of Epidemiology (OEPI), Division of Surveillance and Investigation (DSI) Enhanced Surveillance team is responsible for surveillance of reportable conditions, emerging infectious diseases or public health threats, investigating suspected outbreaks of illness and responding to public health emergencies. The enhanced surveillance team analyzes health data sources reporting syndromic surveillance to identify and monitor events of public health concern in real‑time.
  
  Virginia’s syndromic surveillance system known as ESSENCE contains visits data from reporting emergency departments and urgent care center in Virginia. These data provide a near real‑time picture of community health. The Enhanced Surveillance team collect, analyzes and presents this information to communicate with partners and public about the current trends of disease, or conditions. Heat‑related illnesses are shared on the VDH public website, and display counts, rates of visits, point‑in‑time comparisons, demographic analysis of visits across state, and health districts.

• Respond to EMS data requests from general public, health districts, state agencies, or academic partners for EMS heat data
• Prepare and submit EMS heat data for Virginia Open Data Portal (at least monthly) and other VDH dashboards, as requested
• Assist with EMS heat data analyses and data visualizations using SQL, Python, R or Tableau
• Prepare EMS heat data trends for inclusion in state emergency updates or other emergency briefs
• Work with partners to curate and prepare environmental heat datasets (e.g., wet bulb, heat index, etc) for use by multiple programs. Incorporate environmental heat data into analyses and visualizations,…