Evaluation Fellowship: What Fellows Do

What fellows do

The CDC Evaluation Fellowship Program is a unique, two-year training and service-learning opportunity for fellows to learn evaluation skills. The fellowship helps enhance evaluation capacity within CDC and the broader public health community. Through rigorous training and hands-on experience, fellows contribute significantly to key CDC priorities, ensuring public health programs are effective, accountable, and responsive to the needs of the people they serve.

The fellowship sets clear expectations and provides supportive resources, including professional development funds provided by the host program. The training and experiences fellows gain while working in their host programs helps them build, expand, and improve their evaluation activities.

Training and performance expectations are flexible so that fellows can identify and tailor their training and experience. This allows them to gain experience that matches both their professional development goals and host program assignments. Fellows create a professional development plan with their mentor to complete the fellowship, record progress, and engage in ongoing development discussions with their mentors.

What fellows learn

Fellows are trained in key competency areas with performance requirements that build their skills in evaluation design, implementation, and analysis. These competencies are based on CDC's Program Evaluation Framework and the American Evaluation Association's Evaluator Competency domains. The competencies include:

• Professional Practice
• Methodology
• Context
• Planning and Management
• Leadership and Facilitation (Interpersonal)

Training activities are typically completed through a mix of opportunities within and outside of CDC. For instance, the Evaluation Fellowship Program provides fellows with training on CDC's approach to evaluation using CDC's evaluation framework.

There are also free internal webinars, and CDC University offers several free training courses. CDC programs hosting a fellow provide professional development funds for fellows to take trainings or attend conferences that have a cost for attending.

The table below shows the type of training topics that fellows have taken by competencies.

How fellows serve

EFP equips fellows with the skills and experience necessary to conduct meaningful evaluations that guide public health practice and provide evidence for decision-making. Fellows assess public health programs to measure their effectiveness and identify opportunities for improvement, ultimately safeguarding health and well-being.

Most of the fellow's work and deliverables are with their primary host program placement. However, some may be completed during small evaluation projects outside their host program. EFP obtains short-term evaluation projects from CDC programs and coordinates this process.

Fellows enhance the quality and impact of public health programs by:

• Developing tools to improve program operations and measure success.
• Training teams to evaluate their programs, track progress, and apply their findings.
• Using evaluation results to help streamline operations for greater efficiency.
• Sharing evaluation results to demonstrate accountability for public health investments.
• Using innovative data visualization techniques to present complex data clearly.
• Deploying to conduct evaluation activities for CDC emergency responses.

Examples of Evaluation Fellows' projects:

• Strengthening management of a $240 million partnership with state, tribal, local, and territorial governments
• Supporting public health emergencies by evaluating early warning surveillance systems, developing response tracking tools, and analyzing data to improve preparedness and response
• Evaluating laboratory activities to enhance CDC biorepository services and maintain national accreditation
• Monitoring the results of CDC-funded physical activity, nutrition, and obesity prevention programs to ensure responsible use of federal funds
• Improving data analysis and reporting to reduce viral hepatitis infections
• Analyzing Annual Progress Report data submitted by 59 health departments to identify successes and challenges, informing future assistance
• Creating a new module of economic evaluation for a widely used state asthma program evaluation guide

During the two years of the fellowship, fellows will:

• Participate in monthly fellow meetings (unless pre-approved to miss a meeting).
• Participate in individual check-ins organized by EFP.
• Participate in webinars and roundtables organized for the CDC evaluation community.
• Engage in other community-building and service activities that contribute to CDC and external evaluation activities, based on skills and interests.

Fellows also can access additional support for the fellowship, including group office hours and one-on-one meetings with fellowship team members as needed.