Lab Matters Spring 2018 | Page 30

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 PublicHealthLabs @APHL APHL.org