WORKFORCE
Playing the Long Game:
Sustainability in the Public Health Laboratory Workforce
By Leah D. Gillis, PhD, chair, APHL Workforce Development Committee
Maintaining a highly-trained public
health laboratory workforce is critical
to quality laboratory practice. Drills and
tabletop exercises bring awareness and
demonstrate how to apply appropriate
mitigation measures for natural
disasters, acts of chemical, radiological
and biological terrorism, emerging
infections and other events. But public
health laboratory staff must have other
professional development resources to
perform their complex duties effectively.
APHL’s Workforce Development
Committee (WDC) undertakes diverse
projects to ensure that staff have the
resources they need. Some initiatives span
years due to their complexity and the
involvement of hundreds of volunteers.
For example, the development of the
public health laboratory competencies
and implementation tools, and the
establishment of an online DrPH program
in clinical and public health laboratory
science and practice both were years in
the making. Other projects are simpler,
with smaller volunteer workgroups
spending months to complete the
assignment. But regardless of scope or
topic, all projects are designed specifically
for members to fill identified gaps in
training and professional development.
In the private sector, major corporations
such as Microsoft have invested millions
of dollars to move their human resource
departments toward a competencybased
system, 1 pulling resources from
multiple departments within their
ranks. In contrast, two WDC projects,
the Guidelines for Biosafety Laboratory
Competency and Competency Guidelines
for Public Health Laboratory Professionals,
required the engagement of a wide
range of public health subject matter
experts to ensure appropriate input and
vetting. Actors included APHL programs,
the US Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC), state and local public
health laboratories, federal environmental
and agricultural laboratories, clinical
laboratories, and academia.
Other WDC projects include:
• Who Will Run America’s Public Health
Labs?
• STEM toolkits
• A Practical Guide to Board Examination
and Laboratory Leadership Resources
• Development and implementation
of a “bootcamp” for national board
certification examinations for
laboratory directors
• Thomas E. Maxson Education, Training
and Workforce Development Award
annual nomination and selection
process
• Public Health 101 Fact Sheet
Additional projects developed in
collaboration with APHL departments
include:
• Biannual Workforce Survey in
collaboration with Institutional
Research
• Focus groups engaging early and
mid-career public health laboratory
scientists to identify strategies to
increase job satisfaction and retain
valued employees
• Retention and recruitment toolkit
developed by Emerging Leaders
Program Cohort 3. A workgroup has
started this item and the goal is to
move it forward.
Planning for the Future
WDC will explore academic partnerships
that would align APHL’s competencybased
curriculum with appropriate
university science programs. Internships,
rotations and fellowships could
complement academic offerings with real
life scenarios and provide professionals
to shoulder the performance demands of
rapidly evolving public health laboratories.
A WDC workgroup will begin by
determining how best to share APHL
resources and expertise, for example,
moving forward biosafety course
development. The workgroup also may
examine academic clinical laboratory
science (CLS) programs using, or with
an interest in using, public health
laboratories for rotations in microbiology,
immunology and serology to meet CLS
training requirements .
The workgroup will also consider
partnering with colleges of public health.
For example, the University of South
Florida College of Public Health partners
with the Florida Department of Health’s
Bureau of Public Health Laboratories
(BPHL) in Miami and Tampa to provide
internship opportunities for students.
Similarly, the United States Naval
Academy has collaborated with the BPHL
Miami for the past three years in a highly
successful summer internship program.
The committee will collaborate with other
APHL committees to provide the tools and
methods to align committee activities
with members’ needs and to continue to
strengthen the public health laboratory
workforce whose overwhelming
dedication has been on display these past
few months. n
References
1. Campion et al.: Doing Competencies Well: Best
Practices in Competency Modeling, Personnel
Psychology 2011, 64: 225-262
28 LAB MATTERS Spring 2020
PublicHealthLabs
@APHL APHL.org