CDC Steven M. Teutsch Prevention Effectiveness (PE) Fellowship 2027: Two-Year GS-12 Paid Postdoc in Health Economics, Decision Science, and Disease Modeling

If you want a postdoctoral position that puts you at the intersection of policy, dollars, and population health, the CDC Steven M. Teutsch Prevention Effectiveness (PE) Fellowship is one of the few programs that actually delivers that mix. This is a two-year, intensely practical fellowship placed mostly at CDC headquarters in Atlanta, where fellows work on projects that quantify the health and economic impacts of public health decisions. In plain English: you’ll use math, data, and economic reasoning to answer questions like “Which vaccine strategy saves the most lives per dollar?” or “Is screening worth the cost?” and your answers can influence national policy.

Read this first: the application form is not open right now. The previous cycle closed on January 9, 2026. CDC has published the next window, and applications to become a Prevention Effectiveness Fellow will be open September 8, 2026 through January 8, 2027. That gives you roughly six weeks of runway before the portal opens and a four-month window to submit once it does. Nothing about this program has been suspended or discontinued — the announcement is live on cdc.gov, and the program is recruiting on its normal annual rhythm. Treat the next few weeks as preparation time, not application time.

The program selects about 20 fellows a year — roughly 10 in the Traditional Track and 10 in the Analytics and Modeling Track — so it’s selective but not mythical. Fellows are federal full-time employees for the fellowship term, paid at the General Schedule (GS) 12, step 3 level, and receive the same benefits as other CDC FTE employees. You won’t bring your own grant money or fundraise; you’ll be embedded in teams that have real data and real policy timelines. If you like the idea of turning models and statistics into policy memos that people read and act on, this is one of the best stepping stones available to a new PhD.

At a Glance

What This Opportunity Offers

This fellowship is practical training in decision science and economic evaluation applied to public health. It is a two-year postdoctoral research fellowship focused on health economics, decision science, and disease modeling, and the two-year structure gives you time to contribute meaningfully to projects and to build a visible portfolio of analytic work aimed at real-world problems.

Financially, you’re a federal employee at a mid-career pay grade rather than a stipend recipient. CDC points applicants to the Office of Personnel Management salary tables for the exact figure, because the final number depends on the locality adjustment for your duty station and the pay table in force the year you start. Fellows may also be eligible for a salary increase after the first year, based on performance and a written recommendation from the appropriate management officials. That is a meaningfully different financial picture from a typical soft-money postdoc, and it comes with the standard CDC employee benefits package.

Beyond salary and healthcare, the position provides access to CDC data, collaborators across epidemiology, economics, and modeling, and mentorship from senior scientists who work at the policy interface. That exposure is the core value: you’ll learn how analyses are used (and sometimes misused) by decision-makers, how to write concise policy briefs, and how to present quantitative evidence clearly to nontechnical audiences.

The fellowship also gives practical experience across a range of methods: cost-effectiveness analysis, budget impact modeling, dynamic infectious disease modeling, decision trees, Markov models, economic evaluation with observational data, and advanced statistical methods. Depending on your placement, you might help design models that inform vaccine recommendations, estimate healthcare costs attributable to a disease, or project outcomes for prevention strategies. The work often moves faster than academia — you’ll need to produce succinct, defensible results under time pressure.

Finally, the program is a durable credential. Graduates go into academic positions, state and federal public health agencies, NGOs, and industry roles where policy-relevant analytic skills are valued.

Who Should Apply

The baseline requirement is a PhD or equivalent, with all degree requirements completed before the fellowship starts. If your degree was obtained at a non-US institution, you must also provide documentation of an academic credentialing evaluation showing the degree requirements are equivalent, and the degree documentation must be translated into English. Start that credentialing process early; it is the single most common cause of a rushed or incomplete application.

For the Traditional Track — which CDC describes as being for economists and health services researchers — successful applicants typically hold a PhD in economics, agricultural economics, health services research, public health with a quantitative emphasis, or a closely related field. You should be comfortable with microeconomic concepts, causal inference, and cost-effectiveness frameworks.

The Analytics and Modeling Track is intended for disease modelers, ecologists, operations researchers, industrial engineers, and applied mathematicians. If you’ve built compartmental models (SEIR-style), agent-based simulations, or optimization models for resource allocation, that experience maps directly to this track.

Practical examples of a good fit:

• A recent PhD in health economics who has run cost-effectiveness models for treatment strategies and has a couple of peer-reviewed papers or strong working papers.
• A computational epidemiologist who developed and validated transmission models during PhD work and can explain calibration and uncertainty analysis.
• A data scientist with experience in causal inference using administrative healthcare data who can estimate healthcare utilization and costs.

You must also be willing to commit to a two-year, full-time program and willing to relocate to the assignment location. Most fellows are placed at CDC headquarters in Atlanta, though some are assigned to other states or public health agencies. Relocation costs are yours to cover, so factor that into your decision before you accept.

International candidates are eligible. Work authorization information must accompany applications from non-US citizens, and the program may ask for additional detail as you advance. F1 applicants specifically must have, prior to the program start date, an OPT with an EAD valid for the entire first year of the program, plus STEM eligibility. Confirm those dates against your intended start date before you apply, not after you’re offered a place.

What to Do Between Now and September 8, 2026

Because the portal opens in September 2026 and closes in January 2027, you have an unusually generous preparation window. Use it on the things that take other people’s time rather than yours.

Now through August 2026 — lock down documentation. Order unofficial transcripts for every earned undergraduate and graduate degree, and for any qualifying degree still in progress. If any degree is from a non-US institution, begin the academic credentialing evaluation and English translation immediately; these routinely take weeks and are outside your control once submitted.

Now through August 2026 — line up recommenders. You need a minimum of three recommendations and may submit up to five, and at least two must come from people who are not CDC employees. Ask now, while your writers have a light summer schedule. Give each of them your CV, a one-page summary of the fellowship and the track you’re targeting, and three or four specific contributions you’d like them to describe.

September 2026 — open the application and read every field. CDC publishes detailed instructions for preparing the required information and submitting the online application. Read them the week the window opens so you know exactly what the form asks for rather than discovering it in December.

September through November 2026 — draft. Write your personal statement, project summaries, and any writing sample. Circulate drafts to advisors and to at least one reader outside your subfield who can tell you where the jargon starts.

December 2026 — trigger the recommendation emails. Your recommenders receive a system-generated email from the PE Fellowship program ([email protected]) with submission instructions. Tell them to expect it and to check spam filters, because all recommendations must be submitted by the application deadline. A letter that arrives on January 9 does not count.

Early January 2027 — submit with room to spare. Aim to finish at least 48 hours before January 8, 2027. Federal application portals are least reliable in their final hours.

After the deadline, the program moves through virtual interviews, notification of selected candidates, and then the start of the two-year fellowship. CDC labels these downstream dates as tentative and asks applicants to keep checking the site, so plan around the deadline you can count on rather than a start date you can’t.

Required Materials (and How to Prepare Them)

The official application instructions are the authority here, but these are the pieces you can prepare in advance.

• Resume or CV: Update it before the window opens. Keep it focused on relevant skills — modeling, software proficiency, leadership in collaborative projects, publications, teaching — and include links to code repositories and working papers.
• Unofficial transcripts: Required for all earned undergraduate and graduate degrees, and for qualifying degrees in progress. Collect these early; registrar turnaround is unpredictable in December.
• Academic credentialing evaluation: Required for degrees from non-US institutions, along with English translation. This is the longest-lead item in the whole application.
• Three to five recommendations: At least two from non-CDC employees. Writers should generally be current or former supervisors, colleagues, or professors and faculty members. Brief each one on the track you’re applying to and the specific work you want highlighted.
• Personal statement: Explain why the PE Fellowship is the logical next step, what you hope to accomplish, and which methodological skills you bring. Anchor it in one or two concrete projects.
• Work authorization documentation (if applicable): Non-US citizens must include work authorization information. F1 applicants should have OPT and EAD documentation ready and confirm coverage for the full first year plus STEM eligibility.

Insider Tips for a Competitive Application

This is where many applicants stumble: they show technical chops but fail to demonstrate how those chops translate into policy-relevant outputs.

Tell stories with numbers. Reviewers are quantitative but busy. Use your personal statement to narrate one or two projects where your analysis changed a decision, clarified a trade-off, or produced a surprising result. Be specific about the question, the method, the conclusion, and why the conclusion mattered.

Make your work reproducible. A public repository with clean scripts, documentation, and a short README for one representative analysis is stronger evidence of rigor than any list of software you’ve touched. If the underlying data are restricted, include simulated data so a reviewer can actually run it.

Ask referees for more than praise. Letters that quantify a contribution (“led development of a compartmental model used in three peer-reviewed analyses”) and comment on communication, mentorship, and responsiveness carry far more weight than general enthusiasm.

Match your emphasis to the track. For Analytics and Modeling, foreground calibration, sensitivity analysis, handling of stochasticity, and your modeling toolchain. For Traditional, foreground econometric rigor, cost-effectiveness frameworks, and familiarity with health policy contexts. Submitting an identical package to both is the most visible form of not paying attention.

Write a short policy brief. One or two pages based on your own analysis — question, data, top-line findings, policy implications. It demonstrates the exact translation skill the program exists to build.

Prepare for a timed presentation. The process includes virtual interviews. Practice a ten to fifteen minute overview of a past project and be ready to defend methodological choices under questioning from people who know the methods well.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Applying to a closed portal. The 2026 window has closed and the next one does not open until September 8, 2026. If you find a page or a third-party listing advertising an open form before then, it is stale.

Underestimating credentialing. Non-US degree holders who start the credentialing evaluation in December will not finish in time. Start it now.

Late recommendations. All recommendations must be submitted by the deadline. Your writers need warning, the [email protected] system email, and at least one reminder.

Technical blizzard with no meaning. Equations without a policy question read as an inability to translate. Lead with the decision problem, then the method.

Ignoring visa timing. F1 applicants sometimes apply without confirming that OPT and EAD coverage spans the entire first year. Verify the dates against the program start, and confirm STEM eligibility.

Overlooking relocation cost. Relocation is required and self-funded. Budget for it before you accept an offer.

Frequently Asked Questions

When exactly can I apply? Applications to become a Prevention Effectiveness Fellow will be open September 8, 2026 through January 8, 2027.

How many fellows are selected? The program selects about 10 Traditional Track fellows and 10 Analytics and Modeling Track fellows each year. CDC describes the selection process as extremely competitive.

What does GS-12, step 3 pay in practice? It depends on the federal pay table in force and the locality adjustment for your duty station. CDC directs applicants to the Office of Personnel Management salary table for specifics. Fellows may be eligible for an increase after year one based on performance.

Am I a federal employee? Yes. PE Fellows are full-time equivalent employees during the fellowship and receive the same benefits as other CDC FTE employees, including medical insurance and vacation.

Can international candidates apply? Yes. Work authorization information must accompany applications from non-US citizens, and additional information may be requested. F1 applicants need an OPT with EAD valid for the entire first year plus STEM eligibility before the program start date.

Do I have to move to Atlanta? Most fellows are placed at CDC headquarters in Atlanta, though some may be assigned to other states or public health agencies. Relocation to the city of the physical workplace is required and the cost is yours.

How many recommendation letters do I need? A minimum of three and a maximum of five. At least two must come from non-CDC employees, and all must arrive by the deadline.

What kinds of projects do fellows work on? Work centers on assessing the effectiveness and economic efficiency of public health interventions — cost-effectiveness of screening programs, vaccine strategy evaluation, transmission modeling, economic burden estimates, and budget impact analysis.

Who do I contact with questions? Email [email protected] for questions about the application process for either track.

How to Apply

1. Bookmark the official page and check it periodically for updates: https://www.cdc.gov/pef/php/participants/index.html. The companion instructions page at https://www.cdc.gov/pef/php/participants/application.html walks through preparing and submitting the online application.
2. Prepare now, before September 8, 2026. Update your CV, request unofficial transcripts for every degree, start any non-US credentialing evaluation and translation, and secure three to five recommenders including at least two outside CDC.
3. Choose your track — Traditional or Analytics and Modeling — and shape your statement and work samples around it.
4. When the window opens on September 8, 2026, create your account in CDC’s online application system and read the form end to end before drafting into it. Submissions are handled through CDC’s fellowship application portal (the cdc-efms.powerappsportals.us system), which becomes the live submission route once the cycle opens; the cdc.gov pages above remain the authoritative source for dates and requirements.
5. Brief your recommenders to watch for the system-generated email from [email protected] and to submit before the deadline.
6. Submit by January 8, 2027, ideally at least 48 hours early.

A note for anyone checking this link with an automated tool: cdc.gov returns HTTP 403 to many scripted requests and command-line fetchers. That is bot filtering, not a dead page. The Prevention Effectiveness Fellowship pages load normally in a browser, and the program is active.