CDC Disease Detective Camp 2025

CDC Disease Detective Camp (DDC) is an educational week-long camp program held at the CDC’s Atlanta, Georgia headquarters. The camp was started in 2005 and open to upcoming high school juniors and seniors (who are at least 16 years old during their session).

The CDC Disease Detective Camp curriculum is based on contextual and situated cognition learning principles taught via hands-on activities and seminars.

Knowledge students will come away with:

Identify five careers within public health
Demonstrate an understanding of basic epidemiology terms
Calculate basic epidemiologic rates given an outbreak scenario and data
Recognize how infectious and chronic diseases are tracked in the United States
Understand the role of public health law in protecting the public′s health in the United States.

How the camp works:

5-Day in-person, hands-on activities
Campers take on the role of disease detectives and learn first-hand how the CDC safeguards the nation’s health
Teams probe a disease outbreak using epidemiologic and laboratory skills and report their findings to a group of CDC scientists
Activities include short lectures by CDC experts, a mock press conference in the CDC press room, and a look behind the scenes of CDC