Health

Public Health Laboratory

Statewide Outcome(s):

The Public Health Laboratory supports the following statewide outcome(s).

Minnesotans are healthy.

Context:

The Minnesota Public Health Laboratory (PHL) focuses on surveillance for early detection of disease outbreaks and other public health threats, identification of rare chemical, radiological and biological hazards, emergency preparedness and response, and assurance of quality laboratory data through collaborative partnerships with clinical and environmental laboratories throughout the state. The PHL relocated to a new laboratory building in 2005.

The PHL conducts analyses on clinical and environmental samples to provide chemical, bacterial (infectious disease), and radiological data of known and documented quality to partner state and federal programs. The data provided by the PHL is used for the purposes of assessment, intervention, and making science-based policy decisions. In addition, the PHL screens babies born in the state for rare, life-threatening congenital and hereditary disorders that are treatable if detected soon after birth. The PHL also accredits laboratories that conduct regulated environmental testing in Minnesota.

The PHL collaborates with local, state, and, federal officials; public and private hospitals; laboratories; and other entities throughout the state to analyze environmental samples, screen newborns, provide reference testing for infectious disease agents, and analyze specimens for diagnosing rare infectious diseases (e.g., rabies, polio, anthrax). These activities ultimately benefit all Minnesotans.

New technologies, maintaining existing technologies, and staff expertise, along with variable funding sources are important factors that impact the laboratory. The impact of national and state health reform on the laboratory is uncertain.

The laboratory is funded by a combination of federal grants, fees and reimbursements for its services, and general fund appropriations.

Strategies:

Environmental Health

·         Analyze air, water, wastewater, sludge, sediment, soil, wildlife, vegetation, and hazardous waste for chemical, bacterial, and radiological contaminants in partnership with local and state government agencies.

·         Accredit public and private environmental laboratories that conduct testing for the federal safe drinking water, clean water, resource conservation and recovery, and underground storage tank programs in Minnesota.

·         Test reference and confirmatory environmental samples using scientific expertise and state-of-the-art methods not available in other laboratories.

·         Develop analytical methods for emerging environmental health threats (e.g. perfluorochemicals, pharmaceuticals) and the human body burden of environmental chemical contamination (biomonitoring).

Infectious Disease

·         Perform surveillance, reference and confirmatory testing of clinical specimens for infectious bacteria, parasites, fungi, and viruses, including rare, emerging, and re-emerging diseases.

·         Provide for early detection of infectious disease outbreaks, and identification of infectious agents through the use of classical techniques and sophisticated molecular methods such as DNA fingerprinting, amplification, and sequencing.

·         Characterize pathogens to describe trends in type, virulence, and resistance to treatment.

·         Communicate of laboratory data to epidemiologists and healthcare providers to inform treatment, prevention and control of infectious disease pathogens.

Newborn Screening

·         Screen all Minnesota newborns for over 50 treatable congenital and hereditary disorders, including hearing loss.

Emergency Preparedness and Response

·         Emergency readiness activities to assure early detection and rapid response to all hazards, including agents of chemical, radiological, and biological terrorism.

·         Participation on Minnesota’s radiochemical emergency response team, which responds in the event of a release of radioactive chemicals at Minnesota’s nuclear power plants.

·         Operate the "Minnesota Laboratory System" to assure that public and private laboratories are trained for early recognition and referral of possible agents of chemical and biological terrorism, as well as other public health threats.

·         Help ensure the safety of the public by hosting the federal BioWatch air-monitoring program.

·         CDC Designated PHL as a LRN Level 1 Chemical Terrorism preparedness laboratory to serve to provide surge capacity in response to a mass casualty event involving chemical agents.

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Results:

Timely identification and DNA fingerprinting of pathogens ensures rapid recognition, investigation and control of outbreaks thereby preventing additional cases of illness. The ability to generate the data quickly is dependent on resource allocation, which has been relatively stable, but is being impacted by changes in testing performed by the clinical labs that provide the PHL with the bacterial isolates. These labs are increasingly using non-culture based methods that necessitate that PHL do an additional step to obtain the isolate necessary for fingerprinting.

Novel test methods are developed to assess new threats to public health as these threats are identified. These new tests require advanced instrumentation and workforce expertise. PHL demonstrates readiness to respond to public health threats by successfully completing proficiency testing and maintaining quality in the analysis of chemical and biological terrorism agents. Corrective actions are written and implemented based on the results of these proficiency tests. This measure will assess the effectiveness of those actions.

Screening all babies shortly after birth for treatable congenital and hereditary disorders including hearing loss ensures that these babies receive follow up assessment, resulting in improved clinical outcomes and quality of life for these babies and their parents.

Accreditation of environmental laboratories by the Minnesota Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Program (ELAP) helps ensure that data provided for purposes of assessing the quality of Minnesota’s water is of known and documented quality. New quality standards were implemented in late 2010 requiring that ELAP conduct an on-site laboratory assessment every 24 months instead of the previous requirement of every 36 months. The trend in the performance measures reflects the transition from a 36 month to 24 month assessment interval.

Performance Measures Notes:

^1.   Data is from the PHL for fiscal year 2011 (Previous) and 2012 (Current).

² Data is from the PHL for fiscal year 2011 (Previous) and fiscal year 2012 (Current). This data is a measure of readiness to perform sample analysis for the 11 validated CT methods for 36 compounds, and 14 validated BT methods.

^3.   Data is from the PHL for fiscal years 2010 (Previous) and 2011 (current).

^4.   Data are from fiscal year 2011 (previous) and 2012 (current).