Disease intervention specialists (DISs) play a crucial role in the public health workforce by conducting essential tasks such as contact tracing, contact interviews, and providing referrals for services to control disease spread. Despite the importance of DISs, research is lacking on the job tasks that they perform and the role that they serve in public health agencies. Current federal workforce classifications also fail to capture their unique responsibilities, obscuring the true size and scope of the DIS workforce and complicating efforts to assess workforce needs, salary standards, and growth projections specific to this profession.

This article measures the differences in job tasks across DIS, community health worker, and epidemiologist job postings and highlights the unique role of DISs in the public health workforce.

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