HHS Program

HHS Entrepreneurs-in-Residence Program

CDC was selected to participate in the HHS Entrepreneurs-in-Residence (EIR) Program. The program brings entrepreneurs from outside government to work on complex and important government challenges.

Paula Braun was hired as OPHSS’ EIR and she works with the National Center for Health Statistics on the surveillance strategy Mortality Surveillance initiative. Paula has experience with big data and data analytics and will be working to develop a strategy on how CDC can better use advances in data science within vital statistics reporting as well as other public health surveillance initiatives.

Paula began her career as a Presidential Management Fellow at CDC in 2005. After that, she served as an analyst at the Government Accountability Office and lived and worked at the US Embassies in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2009-2011. Prior to her role as an EIR, she worked as a data scientist for a predictive analytics firm called Elder Research, Inc. In addition to her role as an EIR, Paula teaches a course titled Informatics Solutions for Public Health Decision Making at the Rollins School of Public Health.

Check out Paula’s blog posts:

• Promoting Dignity, Through Data Accuracy, For The Dead *New
• How We Die Matters: Improving Cause-of-Death Data *New
• Understanding Death Can Improve Health – Making Mortality Reporting More Timely and Useful *New
• Fake Name Generator 
• Visualize Vital Statistics 
• An Open Source Project To Improve The Accuracy Of Mortality Data

Additional link:

HHS adds new class of ‘entrepreneurs-in-residence’ - This Washington Post article provides a description of three of the Entrepreneurs-in-Residence’s projects and what they plan to accomplish.