policy
From Atlanta to Washington,
APHL Supports Public Health Policy
by Nisha Quasba, associate specialist, Public Policy
Public health laboratories (PHLs) are barely
surviving from one outbreak to another
with subsequent peaks and troughs in
funding. With annual appropriations
dictating funding, it is crucial to convey
to Congress the significance of a PHL’s
work. As March roared out like a lion,
APHL’s Public Policy group prepared APHL
members and staff for rigorous advocacy.
From Atlanta…
On March 28, over 50 attendees from APHL
and CDC met in Atlanta for the Seventh
Annual APHL Policy Symposium to discuss
the most pressing concerns of PHLs:
emergency preparedness and response,
biosafety, informatics, workforce and
global health.
Members began by sharing successes
and challenges in their state and
local jurisdictions. They suggested
improvements in the administration of
the Public Health Emergency Preparedness
(PHEP) program to increase allocation of
funds to laboratories, which often receive
a limited share of PHEP awards even
though their activities are crucial to the
success of the program. As a result, PHLs
must make hard decisions about cuts to
personnel, equipment and materials.
Also discussed was an external review
to assess the program’s allocation of
funding. Activities to maintain public
health preparedness are being stretched
thin because of these decisions and a 40%
reduction in funding for the program.
…to Washington, DC
The following day, four APHL members
made the trip to Capitol Hill to educate
Congressional staff about the challenges
that PHLs will face in the next fiscal
year. The opioid crisis was a topic of
particular interest to staffers. Ewa
King, APHL president and Rhode Island
laboratory director—a state with one of
the highest rates of opioid-related deaths
in the country—provided a picture of
the epidemic’s grim reality in her state.
Although the laboratory administers
forensics and the medical examiner’s
office, which allows for effective
surveillance of opioid deaths, it lacks a
robust surveillance system to capture
data on non-fatal opioid overdoses. In
addition, the current surveillance system
used to monitor emergency department
visits related to non-fatal overdoses is
limited in scope. King proposes to leverage
the expertise and instrumentation of
existing LRN-C labs to identify different
and changing analogs of drugs circulating
The 2018 APHL/CDC Policy Symposium in Atlanta convened key CDC partners and APHL members to discuss
2017 policy developments
Scott Zimmerman, North Carolina Public Health Laboratory
Director, Grace Kubin, Texas Public Health Laboratory Director,
Jennifer Rakeman-Cagno, New York City Public Health
Laboratory Director, Ewa King, APHL President and Rhode
Island Laboratory Director
in the community with the intent of
developing public health interventions.
Scott Zimmerman, director of the
North Carolina Public Health Laboratory
(NC PHL), talked about the progress
PHLs have made as a result of biosafety
activities which were initiatied with the
2001 anthrax outbreak and broadened in
2014 with the Ebola outbreak. The NC PHL
biosafety officer currently performs risk
assessments to improve laboratory safety
practices at clinical labs, fostering positive
partnerships. Building a nationwide
biosafety officer workforce has taken
years and, with Ebola supplemental
funding ending in FY 2018, PHLs worry
they will lose any progress they have
made. Grace Kubin, director of the Texas
Public Health Laboratory, stressed that
only because of Ebola supplemental
funding were her state and local
laboratories able to update their biosafety
cabinets and laboratory equipment.
“Public health has over the years made
cuts and we are as lean as we can be,” said
Jennifer Rakeman-Cagano, director
of the New York City PHL, during her visit
to Washington. “There is no more fat to
trim off.” n
28
LAB MATTERS Spring 2018
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