MEMBERSHIP
Aiming Upward in Marion County, Indiana
By Nancy Maddox, MPH, writer
When accessing the website of Indiana’s
Marion County Public Health Laboratory,
one of the first things an astute visitor
is apt to notice is the site’s internet
domain—“.org” instead of “.gov.” That’s
because the laboratory’s parent agency,
the Marion County Public Health
Department (MCPHD), is part of the
innovative Health & Hospital Corporation
of Marion County (HHC), a municipal
entity that also comprises Eskenazi
Health (a public hospital operating in
partnership with the Indiana University
School of Medicine), the Eskenazi Health
Foundation, long term care facilities and
Indianapolis Emergency Medical Services.
HHC is governed by a board of trustees
appointed by the mayor of Indianapolis,
the Indianapolis city council and Marion
County commissioners.
Both the public health laboratory and
HHC are dedicated to helping the county’s
950,000 residents achieve “an optimal
level of wellness”—an ambitious goal
in Indiana’s most populous jurisdiction,
encompassing both urban Indianapolis
(the state capital), suburban populations
and several small cities, such as
Speedway, Southport, Beech Grove and
Lawrence.
The Marion County Public Health
Laboratory—the largest county lab in
Indiana—oversees CLIA-waived testing
in county WIC clinics and other public
health sites, and operates two satellite
laboratories: one at Bell Flower Clinic, a
public clinic providing HIV and sexually
transmitted disease (STD) services in
downtown Indianapolis, and another at
Action Health Center, MCPHD’s adolescent
and family health clinic, located just north
of downtown Indianapolis.
While the laboratory’s bread-and-butter
work focuses on water quality and priority
illnesses, it also supports investigations of
illness among the thousands of tourists
drawn to the area for the Indianapolis
500 auto-racing competition and other
local attractions, and collaborates with
the nearby Indiana State Department
of Health Laboratories on specialized
investigations.
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LAB MATTERS Winter 2020
Microtechnologist Archie Campbell analyzes foreign material under the microscope. Photo: Marion County PHL
Looking ahead, the laboratory has two
related goals: to ascend from its basement
digs, where the laboratory has been
housed for almost 30 years and to update
and enlarge its test menu.
Facility
The Marion County Public Health
Laboratory occupies just under 10,000
square feet of the basement of the
Hasbrook Building, located northeast of
downtown Indianapolis in the so-called
Central City or Central Corridor. The
eight-story, glass and concrete building—
home to the laboratory since 1991—sits
on an HHC campus and also houses
the Eskenazi server team and most
MCPHD program offices. The campus,
said Michael Davis, PhD, director of the
public health laboratory, “is surrounded
by neighborhoods on all sides, plus a
small strip mall and several public schools
nearby. Our building is the tallest thing
around here; it’s easy to find us.”
Director
Davis was born and raised in Detroit,
Michigan, and remained in The Motor
City while earning BS and PhD degrees
from Wayne State University—the former
in chemistry, the latter in biomedical
sciences with a focus on cancer research.
After completing his schooling, he spent
two years at the National Institutes of
Health, working on adeno-associated
viruses, a gene therapy vector, and then
returned to his home state to study
hepatitis C virus at the University of
Michigan in Ann Arbor. “At that point,”
said David, “I was pretty much burned out
on viral research, and I switched over to
public health. I don’t regret it.”
Davis became the deputy director of
the Detroit Public Health Laboratory
and remained there 11 years, until 2010,
when Detroit declared bankruptcy and
the laboratory closed. Left “in the lurch,”
Davis found his next position at the
Alabama Public Health Laboratory, where
he also served as deputy director. “I stayed
there two years,” he said. “I realized
I and [Alabama PHL Director Sharon
Massingale] are basically the same age,
so I would always be deputy director.”
Thus, Davis decamped to Georgia to direct
the Georgia Public Health Laboratory’s
satellite laboratory in Waycross—a state-
of-the-art BSL-4 facility built to support
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