Good Science Is More Than a Line Item

This past June, I had the pleasure of attending the Global Health Security Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It is a biannual gathering of global health security experts and practitioners from around the world. The first time APHL attended the conference eight years ago, there were very few laboratory-oriented sessions. Even two years ago, there was a dearth of public health laboratory-related discussions or sessions.

This year, APHL’s team gave 11 oral presentations and one poster, and we hosted 10 bilateral meetings with other organizations, including the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Mérieux Foundation USA, among others. We also had the opportunity to co-host a side event to talk about APHL’s work globally in collaboration with Village Reach, a partner organization that works with low-resource communities in sub-Saharan Africa to improve the capacity and reach of health care delivery services. These important face-to-face meetings, especially in times of uncertainty, are an important way for the association, our members and our staff to reinforce our deep commitment to global health security to both our partners and the countries and communities we serve.

In the past few months, our members have been responding to numerous outbreaks. While the hantavirus outbreak has been resolved, the fact that our members in Nebraska were able to respond quickly is a testament to the gold-standard laboratory practices that enabled them to develop a test for the quarantined passengers, which could only occur through the lessons learned from previous outbreaks. The ability to rapidly respond to global events, such as mpox, Ebola or hantavirus, is a critical aspect of domestic public health laboratory safety and security.

Our members and staff have always been aware that responding to biological, chemical, radiological or emerging pathogen events is always a resource issue, but it’s so much more. It is the ability to coordinate with partners and first responders. It is the ability to reach out and engage with other public health laboratories and learn what they are doing in real-time. It is the ability to do good science with the latest technology, and the ability to innovate and adjust as the situation changes. Our members have been rockstars about telling the story after the fact, but as response events become increasingly more regular, all of the work our members are doing needs to be told as it happens. And this is what APHL is built for.

Right before this issue went to print, the Health Resources and Services Administration announced that APHL will serve as a convening body for newborn screening programs across the country. When we gather in New Orleans, LA, for the 2026 APHL Newborn Screening Symposium, October 11–15, we will be celebrating that new partnership, as well as the people who make these partnerships possible.

Good science is more than just a line item on a budget—it is people, it is expertise, it is storytelling and it is partnerships. APHL may be an association that is known for our work on domestic issues, but our public health expertise and our engagement both here and around the world continue to shine through.