CDC-RFA-OE20-2001: Enhancing Public Health Laboratory Capabilities and Increasing Capacity

State, local, and territorial public health laboratories (PHLs) play an indispensable role in protecting the health of Americans from new, emerging, and existing health threats by conducting laboratory testing and providing other science-based services. The work of PHL systems is interdigitate with other aspects of public health work, including epidemiology. Public health professionals and policy makers use actionable information from PHLs daily to identify and prioritize these population health threats, and to develop and implement effective interventions. In order to fulfill their critical public health mission, PHLs must be capable of and effective at detecting and responding to a myriad of threats across a broad and expanding spectrum of health domains, including infectious and chronic diseases, chemical and radiological exposure, newborn disease, foodborne and waterborne diseases, public health emergencies, such as COVID-19, and others in the United States and globally. Despite their critical functions, PHLs face serious challenges in developing the capacities and capabilities to perform their role. Among these challenges are the rapid emergence of new disease threats, the accelerating evolution in technology and testing methods, and the growing complexities in developing broad interoperability and improving data exchange between laboratory data systems, health information systems, and other data systems. In addition, ensuring safe laboratory practices with existing and new technologies, and enhancing the infrastructure and capacity of the public health laboratory workforce continue to be pressing priorities for PHLs. Furthermore, PHLs often face persistent fiscal problems, workforce reductions, and other problems that threaten their development of needed capabilities to address public health issues, and, in some cases, their ability to perform important testing services. PHLs need to address these ongoing challenges to serve as effective partners, to integrate into the larger, national public health system. The overarching purpose of this cooperative agreement is to improve the effectiveness of PHLs, individually and as components of a national system, to improve public health in the United States and globally. CDC is taking a multi-pronged approach to provide needed COVID-19 funding to PHLs. In an effort to enhance PHL services, CDC will incorporate the expansion of PHL fellowship programs for laboratory science graduates and implement a new public health internship program for undergraduate students to gain experiences in PHL settings. Funding made available through the American Rescue Plan will improve the capacity of the nation's public-private clinical laboratory infrastructure to support rapid, large-scale responses to public health emergencies. CDC's approach aims to get public health resources out quickly during the COVID-19 declared emergency and enable broad access and opportunity to COVID-19 resources. This NOFO aims to support efforts that will enhance the capabilities and increase the capacities of PHLs by strengthening (1) Science, Management, and Operations; (2) Policy, Partnership, and Communication; (3) Training and Capacity Building; and (4) Laboratory Quality, Safety, and Informatics for Public Health Testing Services, Surveillance and Response.