GWU SOW EPIDEMIOLOGIST 2026 SK.doc

CRITICAL CARE MEDICINE, CLINICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY SECTION

EPIDEMIOLOGIST SUPPORT

STATEMENT OF WORK

Background

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the foremost federally funded biomedical research institution in the United States. It is comprised of twenty-seven Institutes, Centers and Divisions. The NIH Clinical Center is the on-site 200-bed hospital for the NIH campus comprised of clinical, laboratory and administrative staff who support the Institutes as they conduct clinical research working with inpatients and outpatients participating in research studies at the NIH.

The Critical Care Medicine Department (CCMD) was established in November 1977 to provide medical care for critically ill patients throughout the Clinical Center who have potentially reversible medical problems. The mission of the Department is to (a) provide superb care for Clinical Center patients who may benefit from critical care services, (b) improve both understanding and management of the critical disease processes, c) train health care professionals to understand, provide, and improve critical care services.

The Clinical Epidemiology Section (CES) of CCMD oversees clinical research leveraging large administrative and clinical databases to address pressing clinical concerns in the domains of severe infections and the critically ill. An important research focus of the CES is to characterize serious infections, sepsis and antimicrobial resistance in the United States, and its associated outcomes. The CES collaborates with federal partners (the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration) as well as several academic partners (Harvard Medical School, University of Maryland, Emory University) partners in these population-level studies.

Purpose

The Clinical Epidemiology Section is continuously expanding the scope of its research, with an increasing number of independently funded projects. There are several ongoing and planned projects that require advanced knowledge and experience with epidemiology and special application of machine learning and artificial intelligence to real world data, a unique requirement not currently available among the personnel in NIH Clinical Center Epidemiology and Biostatistics core.

The major focus will be on the development and validation of a new comorbidity index to allow for fine-tuned risk adjustment for burden of chronic diseases, given their impact on outcomes of patients with acute and critical illness.

In the planned project, CES investigators will access and link multiple databases of varying size and granularity to conduct a retrospective cohort study. A new comorbidity score will be proposed as the base model using only administrative data. Then we will test the benefit to adding subsequently granular data (structured clinical and laboratory data elements, followed by elements from unstructured data selected by machine learning, followed by genotypic data) to test the performance of the comorbidity score’s ability to predict mortality in hospitalized patients controlling for demographics, reason for hospitalization and severity of acute illness. It is anticipated that this project will involve a primary analysis of data from approximately 5, 000,000 patients. This will be coupled with external validation of versions of the comorbidity score in other national-level datasets accessible to the investigators as well as retrospective chart review from collaborating health centers across the United States to validate some assumptions in the initial cohort study.

Given the expansive nature of the study, there is a need for additional qualified personnel with expertise in epidemiology and ways to capture chronic disease through clinical and genotypic data and machine learning techniques to capture insights from unstructured clinical notes.

Scope of Work

A PhD level epidemiologist will interface with other members of the Clinical

Epidemiology Section, an informatics company (contracted for data curation), and other collaborators involved in projects of the Clinical Epidemiology Section as needed for project-related work. The epidemiologist will consult on the design of discrete projects in the Clinical Epidemiology Section in collaboration with team members. The epidemiologist will also collaborate closely with a research fellow and other project investigators while overseeing components of an initiative related to environment/extreme weather and health outcomes. The epidemiologist will meet with members of the study team on a regular basis to discuss and plan data curation and epidemiologic design (e.g., assessment of gaps and plans to mitigate them; contributing to the development of a plan for projection modeling), and will contribute as co-author on manuscripts. The actual curation of data will be performed by the contracted informatics company, study partners, and data managers within the intramural lab, and analyses will be conducted by other members of the study team.

The data will be hosted at/by NIH and not at/by Contractor. If Contractor’s employee (epidemiologist) needs to access the data it is under the assumption that all data will be maintained, managed, and preserved by NIH and epidemiologist will access the NIH secure system remotely. No actual data will be held on Contractor equipment or in Contractor systems.

Qualifications:

The Epidemiologist must meet the following requirements:

1. Have a PhD in Epidemiology

2. Have subject matter expertise in analyzing chronic disease epidemiology

3. Have over 3 years of experience in the academic epidemiology, analysis of data from large healthcare datasets

4. Have independently led analytics for large-scale, high-impact studies

5. Demonstrated ability to independently acquire grant funding Requirements and Period of Performance:

This requirement will include a base year of twelve (12) months, with up to one (1) option year period to extend the services solely by the discretion of the government.

Base Year: July 15, 2026 to July 14, 2027

Option Year 1: July 15, 2027 to July 14, 2028

The epidemiologist will need to commit 15% time.

Program Management and Control Requirements

Conduct:

Contractor’s employees are subject to all policies of DHHS/NIH-CC with respect to conduct when on NIH premises. If rules of conduct are not adhered to by the contract employee(s), the Government has the right to request removal of contract employee(s). Infractions of just cause for immediate removal as requested by the Government are violation of patient confidentiality, endangering patients/guests, rudeness, carelessness, damage to property, etc.

Performance/attendance issues:

NIH reserves the right to terminate contract based on poor performance, inappropriate behavior/substance abuse or attendance issues.

Privacy Act Compliance:

Patients have the right to privacy concerning their medical care and stay at the Clinical Center. The patient has the right to expect that all communications and records pertaining to their care be treated confidentially. The contractor’s employees shall agree to comply with the provisions of the Privacy Act of 1974, as amended, and the agency rules, regulations and policies implementing the Act.

Location:

Work is remote and research will be performed at George Washington University.

The contractor will periodically visit NIH to meet with investigator staff.

NIH Identification:

Identification:

Contractor employee hired to work under this agreement will be citizens of the United States, or, if Alien, have the appropriate permits to work. Employee must be fluent in the English language. It is the contractor’s responsibility to ensure employees hired to work under this contract has the qualifications described above