This is a companion article to the feature, “Emerging Infectious Diseases.”

Throughout the United States, public health laboratories are working to protect people from emerging infectious diseases, which often originate from animal populations.

Humans come into regular contact with potentially contagious animal diseases. People have been infected with swine flu at state fairs, with leptospirosis from their dogs, hantavirus from contact with rodent droppings, and arboviruses through mosquito bites. Since animal illness can easily become the next human illness, it is important for public health laboratories to stay abreast of animal and environmental conditions. Surveillance and laboratory testing programs can help determine the risk to a community.

Human health is entwined with the health of animals and the environment. Typically these three areas are treated separately, resulting in distinct academic research and degree programs, professional paths, and government funding streams. But in a world where people, food, animals, and infectious diseases circulate rapidly, such divisions can limit the ability of public health professionals to identify and mitigate community health risks.

The Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) counts among its members many laboratories that conduct testing across the spheres of human, animal, and environmental health. APHL scientists have academic and professional backgrounds as diverse as the public health testing offered in their laboratories. Such diversity enables a public health laboratory from a coastal state to test shellfish for biotoxins, while a western public health laboratory tests milk to ensure that safe products are reaching consumers.

In some states, public health laboratory programs are linked to animal diagnostic labs. Some public health laboratories are part of a state university system that includes veterinary diagnostic labs. In all instances, such institutions are working to break down the silos that separate such interrelated programs from each other.1

Reference

1. One World, One Health [online]. Silver Spring, Md: Association of Public Health Laboratories, 2015. Available at: www.aphl.org/aphlprograms/pages/one-world-one-health.aspx#sthash.JYOsB7GO.dpuf. Accessed December 7, 2015.