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About Public Health Labs

Analysis, Answers, Action
Saved Topics: APHL, Membership

When health risks emerge or re-emerge, laboratories in public health analyze the threat, provide the answers needed to mount an effective response and act to protect the public in collaboration with other decision makers.  Unlike private medical laboratories that perform tests to diagnose illnesses and conditions afflicting individual patients, public health laboratories safeguard entire communities. In one way or another, their work affects the life of every American.

For example, laboratories in public health:

• Screen 97% of the babies born in the US for potentially life-threatening metabolic and genetic disorders.

• Monitor communities for pathogens that spread in food or through contact with people or animals.

• Perform almost all testing to detect and monitor newly emerging infectious diseases like West Nile virus, SARS and avian influenza.

• Test drinking and some recreational water for bacteria, parasites, pesticides and other harmful substances.

• Rapidly identify suspect agents, as in 2001 when APHL member laboratories tested over 1,200 specimens a day during the anthrax attacks, ultimately conducting over one million laboratory analyses.