FEATURE
Riding the Wave of Public Health Laboratory
Funding into the Future
By Melanie Padgett Powers , writer
A burst of emergency federal funding during the COVID-19 pandemic allowed public health laboratories to upgrade , improve and invest . Laboratories modernized equipment , hired personnel , created more efficient processes and expanded public health programs such as next-generation sequencing and wastewater surveillance .
But supplemental funding has begun to recede . The boom-and-bust cycle of public health funding is well-known to public health professionals . They ’ ve seen it time and time again , which spurred laboratory directors during the pandemic to think critically and sustainably about how to invest COVID-19 dollars beyond the initial pandemic response .
PublicHealthLabs @ APHL APHL . org
Summer 2024 LAB MATTERS 15