University of Pennsylvania Survey
Results Of Academic Epidemiology Salaries Made Public For The First
Time
Group To Partner
With The Epidemiology Monitor To Expand Scope And Utility Of Future
Surveys
Some 20 years ago, the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and
Biostatistics (CCEB) and the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology
and Informatics (DBEI) at the University of Pennsylvania began an
unusual endeavor. These two
academic entities set out to conduct a national survey of faculty
salaries that would help leaders in their fellow departments of
epidemiology and preventive
medicine identify and promote competitive compensation
for faculty members. The Association of American Medical Colleges has
been conducting a salary survey for many years, but does not track
information on epidemiologists since most are in schools of public
health. Though individual institutions have published salary ranges
for epidemiology positions in their own departments, there was no
national yardstick available. The DBEI and CCEB set out to provide
such a resource for the field by soliciting data each year from peers
in about 60 institutions.
Along the way, they also improved their approach, modeling it on the
popular, sophisticated tool that the American Statistical Association
has long provided for the closely related field of biostatistics. The
updated survey distinguished tenured from non-tenured positions and
pegged salaries to the number of years a faculty member had spent at a
particular rank.
Recent Results Now Shared With Readers
Today, there is still nothing quite like this survey, and as of this
edition of The Epidemiology Monitor it begins a new stage. Previously
the results were shared only with leaders who submitted the data. Now,
with the agreement of the 2016 participants, the data are being made
public for the first time through the newsletter for the wider
epidemiology community.
The results included
here are based on the anonymous individual salaries of 421 faculty
members (245 in schools of public health, 99 in schools of medicine,
77 in schools of medicine/public health). According
to the Penn group which has
multiple years of experience administering and distributing this
survey, the results from this small sample should not serve as the
sole basis for decision making, but can, nonetheless, add a useful
perspective when assessing academic faculty salary levels in
epidemiology. The results are presented in the accompanying tables on
pages 3 & 4 in this issue.
2018 Survey Coming Soon
Work on the 2018 survey is now under way, as
epidemiology department chairs from around the country are vetting its
content to make it as useful as possible. The Epidemiology Monitor
will distribute the survey over the summer and provide anonymous data
to the DBEI and CCEB for analysis.
Moving forward, the survey team at Penn anticipates
that the number of respondents will be sufficient to permit depictions
of the salary data broken down into finer categories that will provide
more specific information, for example, contrasting schools of
medicine with schools of public health. We look forward to gaining
more respondents and gathering a more robust data set in 2018. Faculty
members, department chairs, and any other interested parties who would
like their Department to join the 2018 survey should contact The
Epidemiology Monitor ( epimon@aol.com
) by August 1, 2018. We anticipate publishing the new findings in
The Epidemiology Monitor in early 2019.
Future Surveys, Bigger
Aims
In continuing work, the DBEI, CCEB and The Epidemiology
Monitor aim to truly nationalize the survey and greatly increase the
number of responses. The ultimate goal is to provide the field of
epidemiology with an industry standard that can more directly inform
salary levels. The team will also seek to reflect national trends. For
instance, as faculty members gain greater seniority, now does their
compensation reflect their years of service?
Help make sure your institution
participates and stay tuned for more information as the survey
evolves.
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