The CDC takes applicants from middle school onward

The CDC runs fellowships, internships, training and volunteer opportunities
for students and professionals, offering **applied learning experiences across
the education continuum** and across many public health science topics.

"Across the education continuum" is the phrase worth unpacking, because the
entry point is earlier than people assume.

Where it starts

Short-term opportunities exist for:

• Middle and high school students
• Undergraduate students
• and onward, through graduate and professional levels

An agency recruiting at middle school is not running an outreach gesture. Most
public health careers are chosen by people who encountered the field
accidentally, usually late; a pipeline that begins before a subject choice has
been made is how a workforce gets built deliberately.

Named fellowships currently open

• Public Health Informatics Fellowship Program (PHIFP) — applications open
  through 6 November 2026
• Steven M. Teutsch Prevention Effectiveness (PE) Fellowship —
  applications open through 8 January 2027

Those two are worth reading as a pair. Informatics and prevention
effectiveness are both disciplines that support public health rather than
practise it directly — data systems, and the economics of what prevention
actually achieves — and neither is a field anyone stumbles into. Naming them,
with deadlines, is how they get applicants at all.

Deadlines are the operative detail on this page, and they move each cycle;
the opportunity list is where they are kept current.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.