DWD Alumni ICR- Statement A Revision

Goal of the project: The purpose of this ICR is to collect information from CDC career fellowship alumni to document program outcomes, demonstrate impact and inform decision making about future program direction. This is a revision to an existing ICR.
Intended use of the resulting data: Information will be used to guide program improvements and document evidence of outcomes and impact to inform future decision making.
Methods to be used to collect: The method that will be used to collect data will be through Web-based surveys, 1-, 3-, 5-years post-fellowship.
The subpopulation to be studied: The respondents will consist of DWD fellowship alumni.
How the data will be analyzed: Descriptive and inferential statistics (where appropriate) will be used to analyze quantitative data. Qualitative analysis will be conducted on open-ended responses.

Section A. JUSTIFICATION

Circumstances Making the Collection of Information Necessary Background

Background

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is requesting approval for a revision to the 0920-1078 Information Collection Request. This information collection is authorized by Section 301 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 241) (See Att. A Public Health Service Act). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) works to protect America from health, safety, and security threats, both foreign and in the U.S.¹ CDC strives to fulfill this mission, in part, through a competent and capable public health workforce. One mechanism for developing the public health workforce is through career fellowship programs like those managed by the Division of Workforce Development (DWD).

A robust public health workforce has sufficient workforce, organizational, and systems capacity to deliver essential public health services and protect the public’s health. In 2023, after a CDC reorganization agency-wide, CDC career fellowships were moved into one new division, DWD. DWD is CDC’s division with a lead role in public health workforce development². Across all its branches, DWD manages or supports many full-time, cross-cutting career fellowship programs that support CDC and state, tribal, local, and territorial health departments, and partner organizations. Through these programs, DWD strives to provide quality training for current and future members of the public health workforce to ensure they have foundational and contemporary public health skills. Nearly all these programs serve as a pathway to CDC career communities and are an important source of supply for the public health workforce.

The revision to this ICR is two-fold:

Expansion of universe from 1 program to 9 programs: due to the re-organization of CDC, fellowships are now managed by the same Division (DWD). As a result, there is an opportunity to streamline current data collection and reporting systems around training / fellowship alumni. Although the focus areas of public health vary by training / fellowship programs (e.g., epidemiology, leadership, general public health practice, etc.) all the 9 DWD programs have a common goal of training future public health workers and tracking alumni career trajectories and contributions to the field of public health. The programs are:

Epidemiology Elective Program (EEP)
Evaluation Fellowship Program (EFP)
Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS)
Laboratory Leadership Service (LLS)
CDC Steven M. Teutsch Prevention Effectiveness (PE) Fellowship
Public Health Associate Program (PHAP)
Science Ambassador Fellowship (SAF)
Public Health Informatics Fellowship Program (PHIFP)
Future Leaders in Infectious and Global Health Threats (FLIGHT)

This Revision ICR includes alumni surveys for the EEP, EFP, EIS, LLS, PE, PHAP, and SAF programs. Alumni surveys for the FLIGHT and PHIPF programs are being submitted in draft form and are based on the core set of common questions for all DWD training / fellowship programs. As these programs are phased in, CDC will submit a future Change Request to obtain OMB approval for the final versions of the FLIGHT and PHIPF alumni surveys.

2. Removal of the host site supervisor survey: due to the expanded scope of the Alumni Survey (detailed in #1 above), the authors of this ICR have intentionally decided to remove the PHAP host site survey from this existing ICR. Inquiry about fellowship value and benefit to the host site are still of interest to the DWD and the authors will work to refine this data collection instrument, and where appropriate, streamline collection efforts with the other similar DWD fellowship programs to promote efficiency and common outcomes. OMB approval for this instrument will be sought at a later time via a different ICR.

Value of 0920-1078

Under the existing collection, alumni data have been instrumental in helping program staff learn about alumni career progression. Collection of this information has been instrumental in allowing for longitudinal analyses of PHAP. Given the expanded scope to additional fellowship programs, the contributions of DWD to the public health workforce will be able to be studied more broadly including, but not limited to, factors that help predict entry to and retention in the public health workforce.

Overview of the Data Collection System

Data will be collected via web-based surveys (see Attachment C: DWD Standard Alumni Survey Questions, Attachment E: EEP Alumni Survey, Attachment F: EFP Alumni Survey, Attachment G: EIS/LLS Alumni Survey, Attachment H: FLIGHT Alumni Survey, Attachment I: PE Alumni Survey, Attachment J: PHIFP Alumni Survey, Attachment K: PHAP Alumni Survey, Attachment L: SAF Alumni Survey. A sample of how the web-based surveys will look in programed form can be seen in Attachment D: Sample of screen shots for fellowship alumni survey). Surveys for EEP, EFP, EIS, LLS, PE, PHAP, and SAF are included as attachments. Alumni surveys will be distributed at the following time points post-graduation from training / fellowship program: 1 year, 3 years, and 5 years.

Items of Information to be Collected

Each program’s alumni survey will consist of the following types of questions:

Common items: A common set of survey items will be included in every DWD alumni survey (see Attachment C). The common items focus on describing the professional disposition of the alumni: what the alumnus is doing at that point in his/her career (e.g., employed, in an educational program, etc.), characteristics of his/her employment (if applicable; e.g., employer name, setting, work duties, demographics, overall program perceptions and how the program influenced the alumnus’ career trajectory.) Questions, in large part, will remain stable from timepoint to timepoint with a few wording adjustments to reflect the appropriate timepoint and a few questions only asked at 1 year post-fellowship.
Program-specific items: although the wording of program-specific items may change based on the program, overall, these types of questions will focus on: the alumnus’ perception of individual program components, the extent to which the alumnus can apply learnings to his/her professional opportunities, networking, and additional fellowship-specific questions about influence of fellowship on career.

Purpose and Use of the Information Collection

The purpose of this ICR is to describe DWD training and fellowship alumni career progression and contribution to the field of public health. This information will be used to document evidence of program-specific and division-wide outcomes and demonstrate evidence of impact. Information will be used to analyze trends over time and make decisions about future programmatic and/or division direction. The results of these surveys may be published in peer reviewed journals and/or in non-scientific publications such as practice reports and/or fact sheets.

Use of Improved Information Technology and Burden Reduction

Data will be collected via web-based surveys allowing respondents to complete and submit their responses electronically. This method was chosen to reduce the overall burden on respondents. The information collection instruments were designed to collect the minimum information necessary for the purposes of this project.

Efforts to Identify Duplication and Use of Similar Information

Information concerning alumni perspectives of one DWD fellowship program, the Public Health Associate Program (PHAP), has been collected previously through 0920-1078 previously. The purpose of this revision is to continue these efforts for PHAP and to broaden the respondent universe to include the other, similar, training and career fellowships managed within DWD. Data will be used to inform continuous quality improvements, demonstrate value, and inform programmatic decision making. While DWD’s OMB No. 0920-1163 CDC Fellowship Programs Assessment generic package has been used to collect similar information, it is limited to one-time non-recurring data collections. Accordingly, it is not suitable for the ongoing and recurring collections proposed in this revision.

Impact on Small Businesses or Other Small Entities

No small businesses will be involved in this information collection.

Consequences of Collecting the Information Less Frequently

There are no legal obstacles to reduce the burden. The consequences of not collecting this information would be:

Failure to systematically collect information to document evidence of the effectiveness, value and impact of DWD fellowship programs.
Limited guidance to the programs on how to adjust and strengthen their fellowships.

Special Circumstances Relating to the Guidelines of 5 CFR 1320.5

There are no special circumstances with this information collection package. This request fully complies with the regulation 5 CFR 1320.5 and will be voluntary.

Comments in Response to the Federal Register Notice and Efforts to Consult Outside the Agency

A 60-day Federal Register Notice (FRN) was published in the Federal Register on October 30, 2023, Vol. 88, No. 208, pp. 74193-74194 (Attachment B-1). CDC received one comment (Attachment B-2), which was a general expression of opinion. No changes were made to the information collection plan. There were no efforts to consult outside the agency.

Explanation of Any Payment or Gift to Respondents

CDC will not provide payments or gifts to respondents.

Protection of the Privacy and Confidentiality of Information Provided by Respondents

DWD will use existing program records to distribute alumni surveys but will not collect personal identifiers or contact information in this process. DWD consulted with CDC’s Privacy Office which determined that, because the alumni surveys do not collect PII, the Privacy Act does not apply, and a formal Privacy Impact Assessment is not required (see attachment M). DWD collects contact information for fellowship and training applicants under OMB No. 0920-0765 (CDC Fellowship Management System) which has undergone full CDC privacy review and currently operates under SORN 09-90-2301, “Personnel (Employee and Non-employee) Recruitment Program Records Not Covered by Other Notices.” In 2023, CDC provided the updated the SORN information through a Change Request for 0920-0765, which was approved 8/1/2023).

Institutional Review Board (IRB) and Justification for Sensitive Questions

This data collection is not research involving human subjects. No information will be collected that are of sensitive nature.

Estimates of Annualized Burden Hours and Costs

All instruments were pilot tested or previously deployed. Based on seven years of experience managing and administering PHAP alumni surveys, DWD will implement surveys using a similar cadence, deploying surveys one-, three-, and five-years post-fellowship for each graduating cohort. The number of expected respondents per year are described in the burden table below.

Burden hours are based on previous deployment of surveys or recent pilot tests:

EFP, FLIGHT, PE, PHIFP, PHAP: the average expected time to complete the survey, including time for reviewing instructions and completing the survey, was approximately 7.5 minutes (range: 6-8 minutes). For the purposes of estimating burden hours, the upper limit of this range (8 minutes) is used. This estimate is based on years of PHAP survey deployment data.

EEP, EIS, LLS, and SAF: the average expected time to complete these surveys ranged from 10 minutes to 25 minutes, depending on the program-specific items and whether the survey was conducted 1, 3, or 5 years after completing the fellowship/training program. The burden estimates presented in this ICR are based on pilot testing conducted in Fall 2023 with less than 9 federal public health employees, and overall averages for each program.

Estimates for the average hourly wage for respondents are based on the US Department of Labor (DOL) National Occupational and Wage Estimates for life, physical, and social science occupations.³

Based on DOL data, there is a range of average hourly wages from $35.24-$108.30 is estimated for respondents. Table A-12 shows estimated burden and cost information for each fellowship.

The total estimated annualized burden is 175 hours and the total estimated annualized burden cost is $10,510.

Table A-12: Estimated Annualized Burden Hours and Costs to Respondents

Data Collection Instrument Form Name	Type of Respondent	No. of Respondents	No. of Responses per Respondent	Average Burden per Response (in hours)	Total Burden Hours	Hourly Wage Rate	Total Respondent Costs
EEP Alumni Survey	EEP Alumni	135	1	20/60	45	$108.30	$4874
EFP Alumni Survey	EFP Alumni	60	1	8/60	8	$34.07	$273
EIS/LLS Alumni Survey	EIS/LLS Alumni	210	1	25/60	88	$47.87	$4,213
FLIGHT Alumni Survey	FLIGHT Alumni	5	1	8/60	1	$108.30	$108
PE Fellowship Alumni Survey	PE Fellowship Alumni	25	1	8/60	3	$40.51	$122
PHIFP Alumni Survey	PHIFP Alumni	20	1	8/60	3	$40.51	$122
PHAP Alumni Survey	PHAP Alumni	130	1	8/60	17	$28.42	$483
SAF Alumni Survey	SAF Alumni	60	1	10/60	10	$31.49	$315
Totals		645			175		$10,510

Estimates of Other Total Annual Cost Burden to Respondents or Record Keepers

There will be no direct costs to the respondents other than their time to participate in each information collection.

Annualized Cost to the Government

The government costs include personnel costs for federal staff. It is estimated that two individuals will be responsible for the project oversight, data collection, analysis and reporting by program alumni survey. The estimated cost by program by year to manage and deploy the survey is $5,595-$9,423 resulting in a total overall cost of $60,145.

Table A-14: Estimated Annualized Cost to the Federal Government

Staff	Average Hours per Collection	Average Hourly Rate	Average Cost
Epidemiology and Laboratory Workforce Branch (ELWB): EEP, EIS, LLS, and SAF
GS-11, step 1 Evaluation Fellow	160	34.97	$5,595
GS-12, step 1 Health Scientist	160	41.91	$6,706
GS-12, step 1 Health Scientist	160	41.91	$6,706
GS-13, step 1 Health Scientist	160	49.84	$7,974
GS-13, step 6 Public Health Analyst	100	58.14	$5,814
Public Health Workforce Branch (PHWB): EFP
GS-14, step 1, Health Scientist	160	58.89	$9,422
PHWB: PE
GS-14, step 1, Associate Chief of Science	160	58.89	$9,422
Office of the Director (OD)/Science Office: PHAP
GS-13, step 3 Health Scientist	160	53.16	$8,506
Total			$60,145

The estimated annualized cost to the federal government includes estimates only for EEP, EFP, EIS, LLS, PE, PHAP, and SAF. This estimate may be revised when the FLIGHT and PHIFP data collections are phased in.

Explanation for Program Changes or Adjustments

In 2023, after a CDC reorganization agency-wide, CDC training and career fellowships were moved into one new division, DWD. With this restructuring, DWD is now CDC’s division with a lead role in public health workforce development and public health fellowships sponsored by the agency.

CDC was previously approved to collect the PHAP Host Site Supervisors Survey (400 responses, 133 annualized burden hours) and the PHAP Alumni Survey (600 responses, 80 hours). In this Revision we are adjusting the estimated number of responses for the PHAP Alumni Survey (130) and annualized burden hours (17). There is a net decrease of 270 responses and 63 burden hours for the PHAP Alumni Survey. The PHAP Host Site Supervisors Survey is being discontinued under 0920-1078 (-600 responses and -80 burden hours).

The revision of this ICR includes an expansion in scope of the current ICR to align with the new division. The addition of alumni surveys for the EEP, EFP, EIS/LLS, FLIGHT, PE, PHIFP, and SAF programs results in an increase of 515 responses and 158 burden hours for these programs.

Total estimated annualized burden for the revised 0920-1078 clearance is 175 hours, a net decrease of 38 hours from the previously approved total of 213 hours. The decrease is primarily due to discontinuing the PHAP Host Site Supervisors Survey. DWD’s future plans include creating a new ICR for items such as data collection involving host site supervisors.

Plans for Tabulation and Publication and Project Time Schedule

The following schedule will be followed for each fellowship and their specific programs’ data collection instruments.

Project Time Schedule

A.16 – 1 Project Time Schedule
Activity	Time Schedule
Email invitation sent to respondents	Upon approval in accordance with data collection plan
Data Collection	Upon approval in accordance with data collection plan
Analyses	Approximately within 3 months of close of data collection
Report Developed	Approximately within 6 months of close of data collection: communicate to leadership, program, or stakeholders about results and recommendations for improvement or actions
Publication of Report	The project team will determine if this step is appropriate based on data analysis. If appropriate, finding will be submitted 6 months or more from close of data collection.

Survey Cadence

Fellowship programs will deploy alumni surveys to 1-year, 3-years, and 5-years post-graduation. Table A-16-2 presents the cadence of those alumni receiving surveys each calendar year determined by their year of graduation. For example, for those alumni who graduated in 2023, they will be scheduled to receive their 1 year alumni survey in 2024, their 3 year alumni survey in 2026, and their 5 year alumni survey in 2028.

A.16.2

	They will receive their alumni surveys in these years…
Graduation Year For fellows who graduated in these years…	Year 1	Year 3	Year 5
2023	2024	2026	2028
2024	2025	2027	2029
2025	2026	2028	2030

NOTE: the authors appreciate that OMB approval is being sought for a 3-year timeframe and that some of the dates in this table above do extend beyond this period. This is for illustrative purposes only and additional OMB approvals will be sought post-3 year mark as appropriate.

Reason(s) Display of OMB Expiration Date is Inappropriate

Display of the OMB Expiration Date is appropriate for this information collection.

Exceptions to Certification for Paperwork Reduction Act Submissions

There are no exceptions to the certification.

LIST OF REFERENCES – Section A

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About CDC: Mission, Role, and Pledge. Accessed 11.29.23; http://www.cdc.gov/about/organization/mission.htm

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC DSEPD Fellowship and Learning Opportunities. Accessed 11.29.2023; CDC DSEPD Fellowship and Learning Opportunities

Bureau of Labor Statistics. May 2022 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates United States for Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations. Accessed 11.29.2023; May 2022 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates (bls.gov)

U.S. Office of Personnel Management. January 2023. Pay & Leave, Salaries and Wages. Accessed 11.29.2023; Pay & Leave : Salaries & Wages - OPM.gov

LIST OF ATTACHMENTS

Attachment A: Public Health Service Act

Attachment B: Federal Register Notice

Attachment B-1: Published Federal Register Notice

Attachment B-2: Public Comments

Attachment C: DWD Standard Alumni Survey Questions

Attachment D: Alumni Survey Screen Shots (example)

Attachment E: EEP Alumni Survey

Attachment E-1: EEP Alumni Survey Initial Invitation Email

Attachment E-2: EEP Alumni Survey Invitation Reminder Email

Attachment F: EFP Alumni Survey

Attachment F-1: EFP Alumni Survey Initial Invitation Email

Attachment F-2: EFP Alumni Survey Invitation Reminder Email

Attachment G: EIS/LLS Alumni Survey

Attachment G-1: EIS/LLS Alumni Survey Initial Invitation Email

Attachment G-2: EIS/LLS Alumni Survey Invitation Reminder Email

Attachment H: FLIGHT Alumni Survey

Attachment H-1: FLIGHT Alumni Survey Initial Invitation Email

Attachment H-2: FLIGHT Alumni Survey Invitation Reminder Email

Attachment I: PE Alumni Survey

Attachment I-1: PE Alumni Survey Initial Invitation Email

Attachment I-2: PE Alumni Survey Invitation Reminder Email

Attachment J: PHIPF Alumni Survey

Attachment J-1: PHIPF Alumni Survey Initial Invitation Email

Attachment J-2: PHIPF Alumni Survey Invitation Reminder Email

Attachment K: PHAP Alumni Survey

Attachment K-1: PHAP Alumni Survey Initial Invitation Email

Attachment K-2: PHAP Alumni Survey Invitation Reminder Email

Attachment L: SAF Alumni Survey

Attachment L-1: SAF Alumni Survey Initial Invitation Email

Attachment L-2: SAF Alumni Survey Invitation Reminder Email

Attachment M: Privacy Act Checklist

Attachment N: Acronyms

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