member spotlight
Reinventing a Public Health Laboratory
in Riverside County
by Nancy Maddox, MPH, writer
Although Riverside County, California,
is a landlocked jurisdiction, it lies just
50 miles from the Pacific Ocean and
boasts a landscape that ranges from the
lofty peaks of the San Jacinto Mountains
to the resort cities of the Coachella
Valley to the weirdly wonderful Joshua
Tree National Park at the intersection
of the Mojave and Colorado deserts.
As in all of California, Native Americans
once roamed this land, and 12 Native
American tribes still reside here. In
modern times, said Megan Crumpler, PhD,
HCLD(ABB), “most people originally moved
here because of affordable housing within
commuting distance of Los Angeles
and Orange County.” Another group
of transplants—from the increasingly
costly San Diego area—continues to
drive the local economy and grow the
current population of 2.3 million people.
Yet Riverside County and its public
health laboratory—which Crumpler
directs in an interim capacity—are both
in the process of reinvention. Touting
its business-friendly policies, enviable
transportation network and healthy
residential environment, the county is
luring a new class of entrepreneurs, such
as K&N Engineering, Luminex Software
and Ambryx Biotechnology. Riverside
County, roughly the size of New Jersey,
is ranked 10th in the nation for small
business and 13th for startup activity.
The public health laboratory is growing
too. Part of the Riverside University
Health System (RUHS)—which also
includes the medical center in Moreno
Valley, ten federally qualified health
clinics (FQHCs) and the county’s public
health and behavioral health programs—
the laboratory is slated to double in
size and strengthen its program for
molecular testing. It is also actively
recruiting a permanent director.
The vast majority of the laboratory’s
work focuses on infectious diseases,
including sexually transmitted infections,
tuberculosis (TB) (with about 60 cases/
year, mostly in immigrant populations),
select vaccine-preventable illnesses,
respiratory infections and rabies.
Facility
The public health laboratory is situated
in the City of Riverside, the county’s
government seat and most populous
city, with 300,000 residents. It shares a
building with public health administrative
offices and the Riverside Department
of Environmental Health. Currently, the
laboratory occupies about 4,500 square
feet of the first floor, but the entire space
will be remodeled next year, with a
wall torn down and an additional 4,700
square feet built on. New amenities
will include a 600-square-foot BSL-3
space—the laboratory’s first—a dedicated
specimen receiving area and, hopefully,
instrumentation for whole genome
sequencing. The $10.5 million project
has incorporated LEAN processes in the
development of the architectural plan.
The county expects to break ground
March 2018 and finish up a year later.
“The space we’re in was originally
built as office space and retrofitted as
a lab in 1989, so it has never worked
well,” said Crumpler. The expansion,
she said, will improve safety, improve
work flow and “right-size us.”
Interim Director
Crumpler was born in Decatur, IL, and
raised in Florida, where she studied
microbiology and cell science at the
University of Florida–Gainesville,
intending to pursue a career in
medicine. However, that plan was
quickly discarded: “I took a micro lab
for students who wanted to go into a
research graduate track, and I fell in
love with microbiology in that class.”
After finishing up her undergraduate
work, Crumpler moved to the Old
Dominion State and earned a PhD at
Virginia Commonwealth University
(then the Medical College of Virginia)
in Richmond. While completing an
HIV-focused post-doc, she toured
County of Riverside Public Health Laboratory staff. Photo: Riverside University Health System
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