Celebrate Public Health Laboratory Appreciation Month With CLSI

Public Health Laboratory Appreciation Month is a celebration that recognizes public health laboratory staff, scientist, and technicians, and their essential role in protecting and improving global public health and ensuring the safety of our communities. This month serves as a reminder to honor all of the the hardworking public health professionals.

Public health laboratories are critical when it comes to detecting, diagnosing, responding to, and monitoring diseases, and are essential for providing accurate diagnoses quickly, preventing or reducing outbreaks, and developing new treatments for illnesses. Public health labs also play a vital role in helping communities prepare for potential threats from epidemics and pandemics such as COVID-19.

In addition to their diagnostic role, many public health laboratories also provide clinical services such as drug testing or genetic testing. By analyzing biological samples for specific substances or genetic markers, these labs can help clinicians make informed decisions about patient care.

Finally, these labs are also involved in research activities such as developing new tests or treatments for diseases or working on vaccine development projects. This type of research often requires specialized expertise that only public health professionals can provide.

Many of our public health laboratory members are subject matter experts who serve on CLSI document development committees and use their expertise to help create standards that keep our communities healthy.

• Newborn screening: Newborn screening is an important public health activity that helps identify infants with conditions that require early intervention or treatment. The work our expert members do helps ensure these newborns get the timely treatment they need.
• Antimicrobial susceptibility testing: AST is one of the most important activities performed in the clinical microbiology lab. CLSI's AST resources provide guidance on laboratory methods that are used to detect drug resistance in bacteria or other microorganisms.
• Method evaluation and point-of-care-testing: CLSI experts helped develop some of the standards that were recommended for use during the COVID-19 pandemic, including crucial information on laboratory developed tests (LDTs).

The Association for Public Health Laboratories has created a toolkit to help you celebrate Public Health Laboratory Appreciation Month with social media posts, graphics, and more.  

Are you a public health professional? We’d love to celebrate you and hear your stories about the role of standards and safety. Click here to share your story or feedback!