DHS - Bureau of Communicable Diseases

The bureau provides surveillance and epidemiological followup of more than 70 reportable communicable diseases. It is also responsible for monitoring scientific advances in the field of communicable disease prevention and control research, and for incorporating those that are appropriate into public health practice.

The bureau responsibilities are allocated to the following sections:

• HIV/AIDS
• Communicable disease epidemiology
• Immunization
• Sexually transmitted diseases

Student project opportunities involve a communicable disease surveillance issue; for example, assisting in one or more outbreaks or acute event investigations as they occur during the student’s field experience. Opportunities also exist to analyze disease specific testing and surveillance data and evaluate prevention and care policy issues. Depending on the observations made, reports of the investigative findings may be appropriate for peer review and publication in a public health journal or in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Previous student projects

• Canine blastomycosis case trends as a surveillance tool for early detection of human blastomycosis
• HIV/AIDS prevention toolkit for American Indian tribes
• Clinician perspective on need of HIV drug resistance surveillance
• Raw milk consumption
• Clostridium difficile infection among hospitalized Wisconsin residents
• Epidemiologic surveillance of human multidrug-resistant Salmonella Newport infections in Wisconsin
• Medicaid family planning waiver use among adolescents
• Investigation of two clusters of blastomycosis in western Wisconsin
• Demographic, epidemiologic and clinical features of H1N1 infections among hospitalized patients
• Data validation for health care-associated infections in Wisconsin hospitals