CAREER PATHWAYS
Vermont Laboratory Discovers What a Difference a Fellow Can Make
By Rudolph Nowak, MPH, senior specialist, Marketing and Communications
The Vermont Department of Health Public Health Laboratory is hosting its first Career Pathways in Public Health Laboratory Science fellow and things have gone better than they could have hoped.
“ Lauren has jumped in with both feet and is making a huge impact on our rabies testing program,” said her mentor Kathy Seiler, PhD. Lauren Berkley, a University of Vermont graduate with a bachelor’ s in wildlife biology and a master’ s in biology, has a background that includes wildlife rescue and rehabilitation.
Seiler, Program Chief of Microbiology at the Vermont Department of Health Public Health Laboratory, explained that her laboratory does not have a dedicated microbiology staff for rabies testing. Fifteen people, including Berkley, rotate to complete the testing. That is where the fellowship, and Berkley in particular, proved so valuable.
“ She has really taken her passion for what she is here for— rabies and arbovirus— and made a significant, positive impact on the laboratory,” Seiler said.
Berkley wanted her focus to be on zoonotic and vector-borne pathogenrelated projects. She helps with testing animals for rabies and with doing polymerase chain reaction( PCR) for arbovirus surveillance work. It is work that aligns with her deep interest in wildlife health and desire to work on rabies-related projects.
Targeted Impact
“ The rest of my time, I work on various projects related to those two areas,” Berkley said. Those other“ various projects” understate what Berkley has undertaken at the laboratory.
“ She’ s conducted a survey of the rabies testing team to see where our pain points are and where we can improve our processes. And this has led to the creation of a project called the Rabies Refresh Project here at the laboratory,” Seiler said.“ This has been just pivotal, firming up our
Vermont Fellow Lauren Berkley.
testing procedures and really addressing how staff feel about doing it.”
Seiler added that Berkley takes feedback to heart and integrates all the information into how she shows up every day. One example was getting left-handed tools for the three lefties who worked in the rabies laboratory.
“ It’ s almost an accessibility issue for individuals who are left-handed to work with right-handed tools when working with a deadly disease,” Seiler said.“ So that is going to make an immense difference in their ability to properly do necropsies on rabid and non-rabid animal testing, increasing not only staff safety but also staff satisfaction daily.”
Seiler added that Berkley hit the ground running and credited her for bringing some structure and focus to the laboratory’ s rabies testing.
“ I think there was an opportunity to incorporate One Health perspectives and One Health trainings and bringing in different perspectives from the US Department of Agriculture or from veterinary medicine and different areas of expertise to see if we could improve testing efficiency, safety, job satisfaction,” Berkley said.
More Work to Do
Berkley isn’ t done yet, either. Part of her fellowship includes researching and making recommendations for equipment that may be useful to the laboratory.
“ We’ re excited about getting a microscope camera and a tablet in the rabies laboratory so that we can develop more diverse training materials,” Berkley said.“ We can take pictures because the test for rabies is a fluorescent antibody test. So having pictures of what different slides look like, what some of the non-specific fluorescence can look like; different things that might be a little bit tricky while you’ re training.”
The impact on the rabies laboratory has been significant, according to Seiler.
“ I do not think that we would have had the bandwidth among our staff to be able to bring these changes forward and with the speed with which she was able to,” Seiler said.
Seiler added that Berkley has worked with their rabies subject matter expert to help obtain new tools and develop new techniques and studies for necropsy testing.
Berkley’ s ambition doesn’ t end with her work in the rabies laboratory.
“ I want to be a veterinarian, so I’ m taking some prerequisites online.” Berkley said.“ I’ ll apply and hopefully the second year of my fellowship will work out and then I can go to vet school shortly after that and then return to the public health sphere someday with maybe a little more clinical training.” g
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