During the APHL Annual Meeting, May 20-23, our blog will be your center for session recaps, commentary, attendee profiles, photos, video and a daily Twitter summary. Whether you are on-site in Seattle or back at your office or laboratory in Boston, Tampa or Santa Fe, you can join us at the annual meeting.

Look for regular postings on our Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Vimeo sites. Please feel free to leave comments or questions on any of those sites!

If you will be at the annual meeting and if social media is not your forte, APHL is here to help. APHL Communications staff will provide pointers on using social media at the APHL booth (located adjacent to the APHL registration desk) from 12:30 – 4:30 pm on Monday, May 21. We look forward to chatting with you there.

Those of you who aren’t packing your bags for Seattle can follow the meeting in real time on Twitter even if you don’t have a Twitter account. Simply search on Twitter for the annual meeting hashtag, #APHL.

Below is an actual letter sent by parents of a baby boy born with a genetic disorder that was caught by a routine newborn screening test.  It was published here with permission from the family and the State Hygienic Laboratory at the University of Iowa.  We love a happy ending.  

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Iowa Newborn Screening Program
Pediatrics/Medical Genetics
University of Iowa Children’s Hospital
200 Hawkins Drive
Iowa City, IA 52242

Dear Doctor,

We were overjoyed at the birth of our first child, Brody, on October 12, 2011.  As a school psychologist who works with children with educational challenges on a daily basis, I did everything possible to give my child a healthy start.   With a full-term pregnancy and a successful natural delivery, we took our newborn home from the hospital believing he was completely normal.  However, we were shocked when Brody was diagnosed with profound Biotinidase Deficiency at one week of age.

If it had not been for Iowa’s newborn screening test, we would have been completely unaware of Brody’s genetic deficiency.  Never did we imagine as healthy adults, we were both carriers of this recessive gene. The gene has been unknowingly passed down for generations on both sides, as Brody is the first child in both of our families to have the genetic deficiency.

Because Biotinidase Deficiency is 100% treatable with early detection and continuous treatment, we expect Brody to live a completely normal and healthy life. Without the newborn screening which was performed within his first few days of life, Brody would have likely began exhibiting serious symptoms including developmental delays, loss of hearing, loss of vision, coma, and even possibly death. We are humbled and grateful to live in the state of Iowa which offers newborn screening which saved Brody from experiencing significant delays and problems.  He now has a chance to live a quality life full of joy, health, and opportunity. Without Iowa’s newborn screening, Brody’s future would be in jeopardy and our family could be in crisis.

Thank you so much for believing in the importance of providing this screening to Brody and all newborns of Iowa.  Families, like ours, are testimonies of how this screening has positively affected our lives.  We are thankful and most appreciative of Iowa’s newborn screening program.

With sincere gratitude,

Nicholas and Kelsey, parents of Brody

This week is National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week and National Environmental Laboratory Professionals Week.  APHL is honoring the many individuals working public health and environmental laboratories around the world.  Stay tuned for blog posts this week featuring the work of many of those unsung heroes working to protect the public’s health.

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By Sadira Daher, Senior Specialist, Quality Systems, APHL

State Public Health Laboratories have been facing serious financial cutbacks. Many laboratories have had to reduce staff by nearly 25%, affecting testing services. Lab directors are concerned about having difficulty maintaining services, which could potentially hinder the state’s outbreak investigation, emergency response, surveillance and public health prevention programs.

In response to these hardships, APHL and CDC developed the Laboratory Efficiencies Initiative (LEI). The goal of LEI is to help labs maintain their public health testing services despite decreased funding in an effort to build a sustainable public health laboratory system in the United States.

Through LEI, representatives from public health labs, APHL and CDC have met to begin implementing a framework for an efficient data gathering and reporting process; to identify models to improve purchasing of laboratory equipment and supplies; and to provide input on ideas on methods of improving the delivery of public health laboratory services.

Many laboratories already have processes in place to improve efficiencies. Some examples include participation in Lean activities and the creation of a group of laboratories as a consortium with neighboring states. The laboratories within the consortium stay in touch through scheduled periodic conference calls where they can exchange ideas and discuss processes and practices that have been working well.

The consortium has also been useful for education and training. The labs have set up training workshops together and have shared their programs with other states through a variety of modalities. They are keeping track of what is going on in their region through this increased communication.

The strengthening relationships between the labs have made it easier for them to share services as necessary. For example, when a lab had unexpected problems with some of its equipment, it could easily send specimens for testing to a neighboring state.

Another laboratory used Lean to identify inefficiencies in its receiving process for newborn screening specimens. The laboratory addressed the problems and was able to decrease turn-around time. On the first day of implementing the new process, a newborn screening sample arrived after what had previously been the cut-off time for processing, but because the new more efficient system was in place, it was processed.  The test returned an abnormal result which was able to be reported to the baby’s pediatrician a day earlier than if they had used their previous process.

An important part of the LEI is the sharing of experiences and lessons-learned with other public health laboratories.

Other Lab Week blog posts:

• Public Health Laboratories: A Critical Component of the Public Health Puzzle
• Hydraulic Fracturing and Laboratories: What Does it Mean for You?
• Using Technology to Combat HIV/AIDS in Swaziland
• Five Reasons You Should Hug a Laboratorian
• Flu Vaccine: How it finds its way into the needle
• All in a Day’s Work

This week is National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week and National Environmental Laboratory Professionals Week.  APHL is honoring the many individuals working public health and environmental laboratories around the world.  Stay tuned for blog posts this week featuring the work of many of those unsung heroes working to protect the public’s health.

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By Sikha Singh, MHS, Senior Specialist, Laboratory Response Network, APHL

Despite ongoing budget decreases, public health laboratories continue to support prevention and population-based surveillance activities.  Each component of the public health system including first responders, sentinel laboratories, epidemiologists, clinical hospitals and the public health laboratory perpetuate the continuum of sustained population health.  These components of the system are greater than the sum of their parts, with each being an essential contributor to public health victories.  These victories include support offered during a variety of events including:

• Pandemics like the 2009 Influenza A H1N1 pandemic
• Deliberate attacks  like the 2001 Anthrax attacks
• Resurgence of vaccine preventable diseases
• Unintended consequence of natural disasters like the 2010-2011 cholera outbreak in Haiti following a massive earthquake

However, even in the absence of major events such as those listed above, public health laboratories work behind the scenes to perform daily activities ensuring that population health is maintained.  Business as usual, even during challenging economic times, involves public health laboratories performing a wide array of services including, but not limited to, newborn screening, emergency response, disease surveillance and detection, strain typing, identification of emerging diseases, environmental testing, and so on.

It cannot be stressed enough that public health laboratories keep the public safe and remain an essential element of the public health system.

Other Lab Week blog posts:

• Building and Sustaining an Efficient Laboratory through the Laboratory Efficiencies Initiative
• Hydraulic Fracturing and Laboratories: What Does it Mean for You?
• Using Technology to Combat HIV/AIDS in Swaziland
• Five Reasons You Should Hug a Laboratorian
• Flu Vaccine: How it finds its way into the needle
• All in a Day’s Work

This week is National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week and National Environmental Laboratory Professionals Week.  APHL is honoring the many individuals working public health and environmental laboratories around the world.  Stay tuned for blog posts this week featuring the work of many of those unsung heroes working to protect the public’s health.

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By Michael Heintz, Senior Specialist, Environmental Laboratories, APHL

With the increasing interest in our nation’s energy supply, natural gas mining is getting more attention. Advances in hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” now make it possible to reach and extract previously inaccessible stores of natural gas. The Energy Information Administration estimates there are 750 trillion cubic feet of natural gas locked in shale deposits in the lower 48 states. Fracking may allow recovery of up to 86% of that total; enough to meet the country’s demand for the next 100 years.

Originally developed in 1947, but becoming more widespread, fracking is a method of gas extraction that drills horizontal wells into gas-containing shale formations and injects millions of gallons of water, sand, and chemicals to create pressure pockets that fractures the shale. When the shale fractures, it releases the natural gas contained within the rock, which is then recovered through the well. Typically, fracturing fluid is 98% water and sand and 2% chemicals, although specific mixtures vary by location and operation. With up to five million gallons of fluid needed to fracture a well, 100,000 gallons can be chemicals.

Fracking fluid can contain any number of chemicals and solutions to aid in the fracturing process. Currently, 11 states require – or are proposing – registration of the chemicals in fracturing fluids used at individual wells. However, because formulas and compounds can be protected as trade secrets, registrations sometimes only include chemical families or CAS numbers, not the specific material or amount present in the fluid.  In addition to the chemicals used in the process, other liquid products return up through the well during drilling and fracturing, including brine, metals, and hydrocarbons. This “produced water” must be treated before recycling or disposal. Consequently, fracking is not without potential effects on human health and the environment, with groundwater contamination being the primary concern.

Because the wells necessarily pass through aquifers to reach the deeper shale deposits, opinions differ on whether there are impacts to groundwater resources. EPA is studying fracking and groundwater resources, but the results are years away. There are reports of groundwater contamination near mining operations, but connecting the drilling directly to the contamination is difficult. In the meantime, some say keep drilling, while others say stop until we better understand the issues. In addition to groundwater contamination, there are other potential impacts, including air and dust emissions from the drilling equipment, produced water overflows from surface tanks and storage ponds, and well casing leaks.

Environmental and public health laboratories already find themselves involved with the issue. As fracking becomes more widespread, laboratories will increasingly be asked to test groundwater, surface water, soil and air samples in the areas around drilling sites. Moreover, laboratories may not be able to avoid the developing political debate. In Pennsylvania, for example, doctors may ask to see fracking fluid recipes, subject to confidentiality agreements, but are not allowed to share the specifics with patients. Is this a gag order on doctors or trade secret protections? Where will laboratories find themselves in the discussion?

Fracking will continue to dominate the energy and environmental debate. Until the science catches up with the technology, we cannot know the true costs and benefits.

Other Lab Week blog posts:

• Building and Sustaining an Efficient Laboratory through the Laboratory Efficiencies Initiative
• Public Health Laboratories: A Critical Component of the Public Health Puzzle
• Using Technology to Combat HIV/AIDS in Swaziland
• Five Reasons You Should Hug a Laboratorian
• Flu Vaccine: How it finds its way into the needle
• All in a Day’s Work

This week is National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week and National Environmental Laboratory Professionals Week.  APHL is honoring the many individuals working public health and environmental laboratories around the world.  Stay tuned for blog posts this week featuring the work of many of those unsung heroes working to protect the public’s health.

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Computerized information systems make work easier in many fields, including laboratory practice. But can a laboratory information system (LIS) help make a dent in one of the world’s worst HIV epidemics?

Laboratory and health experts in the Kingdom of Swaziland are betting the answer is yes.

Swaziland, a geographically small, landlocked nation bordering South Africa and Mozambique, has been home to human inhabitants since at least the early Stone Age 200,000 years ago. Today, however, the country’s population of 1.2 million is seriously threatened by the highest HIV prevalence rate on the African continent. An estimated one of every four adults is infected with HIV, and many of those are co-infected with TB or multi-drug resistant TB, both of which are also highly prevalent.

Health experts know that HIV prevention, education, testing, counseling and treatment programs are essential to reverse such a daunting public health crisis. Swaziland has responded with a campaign to reduce HIV transmission by circumcising HIV-negative men aged 15-49, and with greatly increased access to testing at voluntary counseling and testing centers and other Ministry of Health (MOH) laboratories. Yet these efforts have been complicated and slowed by reliance on paper-based systems.

Marie-Claire Rowlinson, PhD, a former senior APHL global health specialist, said an electronic LIS “is important for quality of testing and therefore for the quality of patient services.” She continued, “It enables laboratory technicians to test samples more efficiently and with fewer errors in the testing process. For example, because the LIS is integrated with testing instruments, there are fewer manual transcription errors, and quality control procedures can be monitored more easily.”

All of this has a positive impact on testing quality, speed and volume. Technicians are able to spend more time generating potentially life-saving test results, rather than entering data by hand. And the test data can be retrieved in seconds.

Rowlinson added, “A common issue for the labs in Swaziland is that patients will get the same test two days in a row when they only need one, which wastes much needed resources. With a paper-based system, it is much harder to track what tests a patient is getting, but with an electronic LIS this can be monitored.”

Fortunately, the advantages of electronic information management will be coming to Swaziland Ministry of Health (MOH) laboratories soon. APHL completed a laboratory assessment in Swaziland last year and is assisting the MOH with development of an LIS strategic plan for the country. Previously APHL helped MOH stakeholders in the selection of an LIS software vendor.

In 2012, the new electronic LIS system will be installed in the national reference laboratory, the Mbabane Government Hospital National Reference Laboratory, and five other MOH laboratories. It is hoped that the new LIS system will eventually be installed in all 18 MOH laboratories, and the current stand-alone systems made interoperable to enable real-time data exchange.

“In addition to improving quality and expanding test volume, the LIS can be used to centralize data and support MOH decision making,” said Ralph Timperi, MPH, a senior advisor for laboratory practice and management at APHL. He explained, “You can put personnel data on a central database so you can see where your technicians are, their ages and education. You can determine whether you need to provide training for people in one location or if key people are nearing retirement.” He added, “You can store supply information and equipment information, so you know: Where is the equipment? How old is it? An LIS gives you the ability to accurately keep track of things in real time. That’s a very helpful thing.”

In the end, said Timperi, it all comes down to one critical trade-off that can indeed make a difference in a HIV epidemic:  “Putting out quality test results versus moving paper.”

Other Lab Week blog posts: 

• Building and Sustaining an Efficient Laboratory through the Laboratory Efficiencies Initiative
• Public Health Laboratories: A Critical Component of the Public Health Puzzle
• Hydraulic Fracturing and Laboratories: What Does it Mean for You?
• Five Reasons You Should Hug a Laboratorian
• Flu Vaccine: How it finds its way into the needle
• All in a Day’s Work

This week is National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week and National Environmental Laboratory Professionals Week.  APHL is honoring the many individuals working public health and environmental laboratories around the world.  Stay tuned for blog posts this week featuring the work of many of those unsung heroes working to protect the public’s health.

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By Kara MacKeil, Senior Technician, Public Health Preparedness and Response Program, APHL

Did you know it is National Medical Laboratory Professional’s Week?  Sounds very official and impressive, but what exactly does this mean and why should you care?  What do the 300,000 medical laboratorians do to impact your life?  Why should YOU hug a medical laboratorian?  Let’s find out!

So what is a medical laboratory and how are they different from public health laboratories?  While most public health laboratories do perform clinical tests, they’re chiefly concerned with public health as a whole rather than the diagnosis and treatment of an individual.  Medical laboratories focus on the individual, but they still have a role to play in public health as they report certain critical findings to state and federal health authorities.  Many are also members of the Laboratory Response Network, a network of labs that respond to public health emergencies. But overall public health isn’t the primary focus of medical laboratories, as they exist mainly to assist clinicians in making diagnosis’s for specific patients.

Before moving to the DC area, I worked in a medium-sized doctor’s office in Vermont. We were lucky enough to have a small in-house medical lab staffed with dedicated laboratorians to take care of the frequently requested tests. Those laboratorians were a big part of patient care and the clinicians consulted with them several times a day.

To paraphrase the campaign, Laboratory Professionals Get Results.  Your doctor made their best guess.  But it’s a medical laboratorian that can tell the difference between bacterial vaginosis and venerial diseaseor say “I’m sorry, but it’s definitely giardia.”  The news they bear is vital to accurate treatment.  So with this in mind, here are five reasons you should hug a medical laboratorian:

1 – Laboratory work helps doctors fine-tune.  Before moving to the DC area, I worked in a medium-sized doctor’s office in Vermont. We were lucky enough to have a small in-house lab staffed with dedicated laboratorians to take care of the frequently requested tests.  I still carry the vivid memory of a certain patient’s lipid test that was so bad, the shocked lab technician marched the blood tube over herself to show the patient’s doctor. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but the patient’s cholesterol was so high that after the blood had been centrifuged the normally yellowish-clear plasma was milky. This is not what you want your blood to look like! Thanks to the lab test, the patient’s doctor knew exactly how bad things were and could devise a much more effective treatment plan. Cholesterol isn’t the only thing that medical laboratorians can help monitor.  Standard blood panels often include tests that screen for diabetes and thyroid disease, monitor your kidney and liver functions, and check the levels of essentials like vitamin D.

2 – They can save you from unnecessary shots.  It’s easy to remember which ankle you broke, or how often you get migraines, but do you remember how many hepatitis-B vaccinations you’ve received? What about your kids? Schools and employers need to know, and if you’re new to the country so does the government.  Imagine, if you will, a patient with no vaccination records who knows they’ve had some shots but has no idea what they were.  Maybe they moved, maybe the records are lost, or possibly they’re a refugee from another country.  Sadly, this was a frequent situation in the office where I worked, but how do you address it? There is the option of redoing the schedule, but even after eliminating the childhood diseases that adults generally don’t need protection from, this would take at least a year. Who can save the day?  That’s right, medical laboratorians!  With a small blood sample a medical laboratorian can test a patient for immunity to almost any disease you’d care to know about, thereby laying out in clinical detail what shots that patient does and doesn’t need.  This saves money for both patient and doctor, and prevents patients from getting unneeded injections.

3 -   They can be the deciding voice in diagnosis. Think about the reasons for your last trip to the doctor’s office.   Maybe you were having some sudden “digestive distress.” Maybe you were worried about a strange rash, or perhaps you wanted to know if that sore throat was actually strep.  For all of these complaints and many more, your doctor probably took a look, made a preliminary diagnosis, and sent it to a laboratory for analysis.  There are quite a few medical symptoms that can be caused by very different illnesses, and often the true cause (and correct treatment) can only be determined by the lab.  For example: it’s not uncommon for certain types of allergic skin reactions to appear very similar to certain fungal infections, but the treatment that will clear the allergic rash actually feeds that fungus and makes it grow (gross).  Lab tests can determine which is which without a trial-and-error treatment.

4 – They protect babies!  Even though we’ve known about the dangers of lead poisoning for years, lead contamination is still a very real problem that is especially dangerous for babies and young children.  Old homes that still have their original lead-based paint and contaminated toys or food can lead to dangerously high lead levels in infants.  Luckily, most states have routine testing programs to monitor infant lead levels.  At the office where I worked, almost every baby on the patient rolls received lead testing at regularly scheduled points in their development.  We’d gather a tiny sample during a regular office visit and send it off to the state public health laboratory for testing.  While your baby probably won’t take kindly to it, a small blood sample (I promise, it really is a VERY small amount) lets a medical laboratorian see whether your baby is at risk, letting you take action as soon as possible.

5 – They protect public health, not just individual patients – Though short, a summer in Vermont is always memorable. The shady green of the hiking trails, the gorgeous sunsets over Lake Champlain, the seasonal giardia…wait, what?  You read that right, seasonal giardia.  Like pretty much every other doctor’s office in the country, as soon as it got warm enough to swim we stocked up on the fecal-testing kits.  Lakefront or ocean, public beaches area easily contaminated, and for the healthcare world the start of summer is often heralded by a fresh wave (sorry) of diarrheal disease.  Thanks to the efforts of medical laboratorians, doctors can confirm just what parasite or microbe is causing this distress and report up the chain to their state or local health department, creating a more vivid picture of the problem that allows for a more accurate response.  Different problems call for different actions, so without the medical laboratorians, prevention would take longer.

There you have it!  Medical laboratorians can make a big impact on your health and your family’s health, whether they work in a small lab right in your doctor’s office or they’re testing your samples at the state public health laboratory.

Other Lab Week blog posts:

• Building and Sustaining an Efficient Laboratory through the Laboratory Efficiencies Initiative
• Public Health Laboratories: A Critical Component of the Public Health Puzzle
• Hydraulic Fracturing and Laboratories: What Does it Mean for You?
• Using Technology to Combat HIV/AIDS in Swaziland
• Flu Vaccine: How it finds its way into the needle
• All in a Day’s Work

This week is National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week and National Environmental Laboratory Professionals Week.  APHL is honoring the many individuals working public health and environmental laboratories around the world.  Stay tuned for blog posts this week featuring the work of many of those unsung heroes working to protect the public’s health.

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By Stephanie Chester, MS, Senior Specialist, Influenza Programs, APHL

When you get your annual flu vaccine, chances are you roll up your sleeve, feel a small prick and go on about your day without thinking any more about the shot. Yet there is a lot of work that takes place behind the scenes to determine what’s in that injection.

Fortunately for you, the US has a system for national influenza surveillance. Data from across the US is collected to identify which flu viruses are circulating, if the current season’s vaccine is a good match, and which viruses should be included in the next year’s vaccine.

Did you know that preparations for next season’s flu vaccine start at the beginning of each flu season? In fact, it is the specimens collected at the beginning of each new flu season that help inform vaccine virus selection for the next year. So how does this work exactly? Well, it is a complicated process but one in which public health laboratories play a critical role.

Let’s say you come down with a fever, cough, sore throat and other generally crummy symptoms. You decide to give in and go to the doctor who will likely test you for influenza. Some doctors act as sentinel providers which means they regularly submit specimens collected from patients with flu-like symptoms to public health laboratories for influenza surveillance. Public health labs can also receive specimens from a variety of other submitters including hospital/clinical laboratories, university student health centers, long-term care facilities, commercial laboratories and many more.

Now here’s the part that APHL staff really like to talk about: the public health lab role! The public health lab will test the submitted specimens for influenza.  They will then characterize the influenza virus down to the specific flu subtype using a real-time reverse transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR). These test results are reported to CDC and help inform what specific types and subtypes of influenza are currently circulating in the country and locally. This helps CDC and state/local public health officials determine if this year’s vaccine is effective at protecting us from what is actually circulating.

The public health lab then selects a subset of specimens to submit for national surveillance.  This subset is grown up in virus culture and further characterized to determine exactly which influenza viruses are predominant and thus should be included in next season’s vaccine. Each February, CDC, in collaboration with the World Health Organization and other countries, uses real-time RT-PCR data, sequencing analysis and viral isolate characterization results to determine which viruses to include in the Northern Hemisphere’s vaccine for the next season.

As you can see, a lot of effort goes into national influenza surveillance and vaccine virus selection, and public health labs are integral in this process. Even with this season being so mild and slow to start, the diligent work of public health labs and their health departments ensured that specimens arrived at CDC consistently and on time to help inform vaccine virus selection.

As we celebrate Lab Week, I for one am very grateful for the hard work and dedication of all the public health lab personnel and public health officials who consistently perform exemplary work to support our national influenza surveillance system. Their work on influenza alone impacts all our lives, from informing our communities and physicians about circulating flu viruses to helping to determine what goes into that annual prick in our arm. They deserve to be celebrated! Happy Lab Week!

 Other Lab Week blog posts:

• Building and Sustaining an Efficient Laboratory through the Laboratory Efficiencies Initiative
• Public Health Laboratories: A Critical Component of the Public Health Puzzle
• Hydraulic Fracturing and Laboratories: What Does it Mean for You?
• Using Technology to Combat HIV/AIDS in Swaziland
• Five Reasons You Should Hug a Laboratorian
• All in a Day’s Work

This week is National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week and APHL is honoring the many individuals working public health and environmental laboratories around the world.  Stay tuned for blog posts this week featuring the work of many of those unsung heroes working to protect the public’s health.

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By Chris N. Mangal, MPH, Director, Public Health Preparedness and Response, APHL

For a few days I pondered what to say in this blog post that would help folks to have a better appreciation of laboratorians… Why should people care about laboratorians? After all, they only get results.

Yes, that’s it! Laboratorians get results which play a key role in medical treatments and overall population health.

Think about it – when you feel sick, you go to your doctor’s office or your local hospital depending on the intensity of the symptoms.  The physicians do their best to temporarily treat your symptoms and they quickly get some samples from you. Off they go… ever wondered where your samples went? Probably to the in-house hospital laboratory or a local commercial laboratory.  These laboratories then work closely with public health laboratories so they can quickly identify what’s making you sick. Is it a chemical? Other toxic compounds? A super bug which is resistant to antibiotics? In certain instances, other public health officials get involved to monitor the extent of the illness in a population. Just think, all of this started with a laboratory result!

Much of this work is happening behind the scenes to get you the correct and best medical treatment and to reduce the spread of diseases in a population.

Laboratorians aren’t the best at tooting their own horn so organizations like APHL must play a role in promoting their valuable work. On a daily basis, APHL staff work side-by-side with laboratorians to protect global health.

Laboratorians from across the globe ensure that your water is safe to drink, your food is safe to eat, your sunscreen actually works and provides appropriate protection from the sun (more about this at a later date) and they’re also there when you get ill to quickly detect the culprit and inform your treatment. So, the next time someone takes a sample from you, remember the thousands of highly qualified laboratorians who are quietly working behind the scenes doing their routine – all in a day’s work – to keep you safe and healthy!

Thank you to all of the exceptional people who work in or on behalf of laboratories.

Other Lab Week blog posts:

• Building and Sustaining an Efficient Laboratory through the Laboratory Efficiencies Initiative
• Public Health Laboratories: A Critical Component of the Public Health Puzzle
• Hydraulic Fracturing and Laboratories: What Does it Mean for You?
• Using Technology to Combat HIV/AIDS in Swaziland
• Five Reasons You Should Hug a Laboratorian
• Flu Vaccine: How it finds its way into the needle

By Laura Siegel, Specialist, National Center for Public Health Laboratory Leadership, APHL

Last Tuesday around 8:30am I was standing in the Student Activity Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Normally I wouldn’t expect to see much of anything on a college campus this early in the morning, but that morning students decked out in red T-shirts were filtering into the hall. I was thinking to myself, “Either they must be in the wrong place, or I am….” Eventually I caught a glimpse of the slogan on their shirts and realized we were both there for the same event: UT’s Disease Detectives Conference on public health careers.

On April 10, over 200 university students donated their time to serve as volunteers for the University of Texas at Austin’s Become a Disease Detective: Discover Public Health! conference and an additional 600 participants stopped by throughout the day, making the fifth year of Disease Detectives one of the most successful.

Disease Detectives introduces university students, faculty and pre-health advisors to career opportunities in the field of public health. This year’s conference featured over 30 exhibitors and approximately 30 scientific presenters, including Sam Stew, APHL/CDC EID fellow at the Iowa State Hygienic Laboratory, Dave Carpenter, former laboratory director of the Illinois State Public Health Laboratory, and Joseph McCormick and Susan Fisher-Hoch, both longtime public health advocates and former CDC staff. I was there on behalf of APHL’s National Center for Public Health Laboratory Leadership (NCPHLL) along with three of my colleagues.

Over the course of the day, I spoke with many students studying a wide array of subjects including microbiology, biochemistry, public health, medical laboratory science, sociology, English and more. However, the one common theme I heard over and over again was: “I didn’t know public health existed as a career field until [fill in the blank], but I wish I found out sooner.”

Here are a few quotes from attendees:

“It wasn’t until about 4 years ago at this conference – otherwise I did not know about this field,” Sam Stew, Emerging Infectious Disease Fellow, Iowa State Hygienic Laboratory.

“When I learned about public health laboratories, I was stunned at the huge scale of what a public health lab could do,” Lauren Rego, Biochemistry student, University of Texas – Austin.

“If I had known about public health, my career path would have been a lot easier,” Vanessa Telles, program specialist, emergency preparedness branch, Texas Department of State Health Services.

 “Public health has always been around, but a lot of people have a misunderstanding of what it really is,” Jerry Fan, Microbiology student, University of Texas – Austin.

 “Public health is often not publicized – you only ever hear about it when there are outbreaks and disasters and that’s when we need it most… but we have to keep the infrastructure going,” Byron Barksdale, Biochemistry student, University of Texas – Austin.

The goal of Disease Detectives and many other NCPHLL activities (funding for STEM festivals, promotion of Labsciencecareers.com, APHL’s storytelling project) is to bring public health out of the woodwork and increase student knowledge and interest in the field.  If nothing else, the talented, passionate and dedicated students I met at UT-Austin are proof to me that Disease Detectives and similar events DO impact both the academic and career choices of students, and I hope to see more like them in the future.

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• Why YOU Should Consider a Career in Public Health Laboratory Science