On the Front Line Award

The FDA FERN and Laboratory Flexible Funding Model (LFFM) program staff are responsible for possibly the most significant contributions to food safety in the last decade. Starting with the FDA FERN cooperative agreements, they developed models of best practices to increase the probability that state analytical data packets meet the requirements needed for FDA regulatory enforcement. That work has continued into the current LFFM cooperative agreements, which are responsible for dozens of recalls each year. In addition to their surveillance work, they have overseen and coordinated the research and development of new analytical methods for emerging pathogens like Cyclospora, which have greatly increased the national capacity for response and surveillance. Together they oversee a network of state and local laboratories, and are significantly responsible for the current strength, capacity, and capability of the nation's food safety testing.​

The staff of the USDA FSIS Food Emergency Response Network, or "FERN," are largely responsible for developing the network into what it is today. The FERN network has immeasurably strengthened the nation's food safety capabilities. Their work and leadership have led to the development and increased capacity for numerous methods for the detection of routine pathogens and threat agents in food. In addition to their contributions to method development, they are also responsible for overseeing the development and delivery of training to hundreds of laboratory staff across the country. The training courses they offered were available to all FERN laboratories and were some of the very few in-person training courses available to food safety analysts. While they're no longer able to support in-person training, the USDA FSIS FERN program staff now support the development of online training courses. These new online courses for Salmonella and Listeria are available on-demand for all FERN member lab staff via the FERN portal. Their combined past and current efforts are a shining example of everything the "On the Front Line" award stands for.​

In her role as the director of the Office of Partnerships at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Barbara Cassens dedicates herself to supporting regulatory agencies, including laboratories, responsible for safeguarding our food supply. In her current position, Cassens is responsible for guiding and supervising millions of dollars of investments in state, tribal, local and territorial partners, and partner associations, encompassing areas related to foods and medical products. Before her tenure at FDA, Cassens gained valuable experience working for Nestle, Dole Packaged Foods and John Labatt, LLC. She started her career in the laboratory and never lost her appreciation for the power of defensible laboratory data and the people creating that data.

At FDA, Cassens supports and promotes the activities of regulatory agencies, such as the regulatory program standards, cooperative agreement programs, training, information and data sharing, laboratory initiatives and rapid response teams. She is the ultimate connector of people, organizations and ideas and is a staunch advocate for Domestic Mutual Reliance which aims to unite workforces within an integrated food safety system.

Cassens revolutionized the public health laboratory community by conceptualizing and implementing the Laboratory Flexible Funding Model—or LFFM—grant program, which commenced in 2020. She brought the right resources to the table to get the job done, including the input of laboratory partners. With others at the FDA, she recognized how associations such as APHL and FDA would be key partners in supporting food testing laboratories. The result was the crafting of the ISO Accreditation Support grant that put the efforts into one agreement. The relationship among AFDO, AAFCO and APHL continues to be strong today, more than 10 years since our first joint agreement.

Grubaugh has made significant contributions to the practice of public health laboratory science starting with research interests in developing genomic sequencing laboratory methods for Zika and other arboviruses. This work included developing amplicon sequencing methods that would eventually be leveraged for the ARTIC sequencing protocols for SARS-CoV-2. Early in the COVID-19 response, his team assisted the Connecticut Department of Public Health to provide laboratory sequencing capacity and to create the Yale SARS-CoV-2 Genomic Surveillance Initiative—CovidTrackerCT.  Grubaugh took an active role in interpreting the findings from this data tracker to allow for real-time situational awareness for tracking the spread of variants of concern in Connecticut and across the Northeast through public Twitter threads.

Grubaugh also serves as an advisory board member for SalivaDirect—a direct amplification PCR method from saliva for the detection of SARS-CoV-2. This method significantly enhanced the scalability and throughput of COVID-19 diagnostics at a national level, including many public health laboratories. His lab was actively engaged with setting up a surveillance program in the NBA. The serial testing cohort contributed significantly to the body of evidence for virus transmission dynamics and provided support for a variety of mitigation strategies leveraged throughout the country.

Burr is a health scientist in the office of regulatory science at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). For decades, he has supported public health laboratories as they expanded capabilities and capacities, bolstered their quality management systems through ISO accreditation and strengthened an integrated food safety system. Burr has worked tirelessly to ensure that state and local laboratory voices are heard in these national efforts. 

While at the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, he helped design the Food Emergency Response Network, which provides for an early means of detecting threat agents in the food supply, along with preparing the nation's laboratories to respond to food-related emergencies. He has also been an invaluable laboratory advocate in the Partnership for Food Protection initiative working to strengthen an integrated food safety system.

Metchock holds a BS in Medical Technology and a Master's and Doctorate of Public Health in laboratory practice. With her almost 20 years of hospital microbiology experience and board certification in microbiology, Metchock played a crucial role in obtaining CLIA-certification for the CDC diagnostic mycobacteriology laboratory, enhancing a state-of-the-art reference laboratory for the country and globally. Her clinical laboratory expertise, steadfast work ethic and ability to systematically evaluate complex situations have led to continued advancements in our understanding of the genetic basis of drug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Her efforts have aided standardizing phenotypic antimycobacterial susceptibility testing (AST) methods. In 2009, Metchock worked with the research team to design, evaluate and implement a novel nationally-available program for rapidly detecting mutations associated with drug resistance in TB. This program, the CDC Molecular Detection of Drug Resistance Service, has been a model for global programs in establishing a national service that provides clear reporting language and expert consultation to aid interpretation.

Metchock's decades of work as a clinical microbiologist have enabled her to participate in multiple research collaborations and, in support of the TB Trials Consortium, as a subject-matter expert for numerous scientific panels. A frequent presenter at national and international meetings, she has substantially advanced global understanding of drug resistance in TB. She has worked to educate public health scientists, clinicians and researchers about challenges associated with phenotypic AST, improving their understanding of the molecular basis of drug resistance in TB. Such understanding can improve rapid reporting of laboratory results for clinical care and more accurate surveillance for drug resistance. In just the last nine years, Metchock's laboratory has confirmed or detected more than 1,000 cases of multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB and 33 cases of extensively drug-resistant (XDR) TB, representing virtually all reported MDR and XDR TB cases in the US during that period.