Lab Matters Spring 2023 | Page 15

FEATURE

The Need for LRN Modernization Through the Lens of an Outbreak

by Melanie Padgett Powers , writer

Jocelyn R . Hauser , PhD , D ( ABMM ), laboratory director at the District of Columbia Public Health Laboratory , was checking email on her phone in her Cleveland hotel room before heading out for the final day of the APHL 2022 Annual Conference . An email caught her attention : an alert from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ) about monkeypox , later renamed mpox . It was May 20 , 2022 .

That CDC Health Alert Network advisory reported a confirmed case of mpox in Massachusetts and asked clinicians to be vigilant to the mpox rash .

“ Immediately when they sent that out , I was emailing back and forth with my team : Where are we ? Do we have all the reagents in case we get something ? Do we have the trained people ? Just trying to gear up just in case ,” Hauser says .

PublicHealthLabs @ APHL APHL . org

Spring 2023 LAB MATTERS 13