OneLab Summit 2024 – Day 3 Closing Remarks
Dr. Kelly Winter is the Training and Workforce Development Branch chief in the Division
of Laboratory Systems at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She has an MPH and a
PhD in epidemiology, with more than 20 years of experience in communication and education,
including over a decade in public health. Dr. Winter began her career at CDC in 2014 as a
training specialist in DGMQ of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious
Diseases.
During CDC's 2014-2015 Ebola emergency response, she led the entry screening and
self-monitoring training for travelers at US airports. And from 2015 to 2018, she worked in
DGMQ's Travelers Health Branch, creating training and communication material and serving as
a managing editor of the CDC Yellow Book. Over to you, Kelly, to give the closing remarks.
Thanks, Alicia. And I want to second Alicia's sentiments and also, give a huge shoutout
to Alicia for all that she did to help organize this Summit and for emceeing every day of this
three-day event, so huge thanks to Alicia
as well as all those who helped make this a success. And thank you to all our presenters,
not only here at the Summit, but those who present for us every month during our monthly
OneLab events. All right, so thank you for joining us for the last day of the 2024 OneLab
Summit.
Today's presentations were focused on preparedness. We learned from Chris Mangal
how laboratories can prepare for future responses, including the importance of building and
maintaining relationships with networks and partners during nonresponse times and including
partners in response-related exercises.
Chris talked us through important steps laboratories can take now to detect and
respond to potential threats to rapid and quality testing, including establishing a supportive
environment for the workforce and an incident management system to allow for a coordinated
response. She shared things laboratories can do now and during the recovery period to prepare
for future responses, including acknowledging staff and conducting an after action review to
identify operational challenges and solutions that can inform what your laboratory does moving
forward to improve how your laboratory responds to emergencies in the future.
This includes steps that can be taken to better advocate for your laboratory, additional
partner connections that may be needed, and ways to recruit new and retain existing staff.
Chris also shared the testing playbook for biological emergencies, which is a resource created to
help federal-level US decision makers with an evidence-based guide for making rapid and
effective decisions about testing during an infectious-disease-related public health emergency.
Dr. Diego Arambula talked us through how to evaluate your laboratory's quality
improvement process, including how a QMS can identify opportunities for improvements to
quality. He also shared many benefits of a QMS and the importance of the cost of quality. He
discussed how to implement a QMS and provided an example of the different roles and
responsibilities that laboratory personnel have in implementing a QMS. Lastly, he shared a
selection of resources that contain QMS standards and guidance.
Dr. Sabrina DeBose discussed how to evaluate your laboratory's risk management
process. She stressed that quality management prevents risk, and that risk management
improves quality. She talked us through the different components of risk management,
including risk assessment and the process of conducting a risk assessment, as well as when to
conduct a risk assessment. She also discussed ways to mitigate risk. Training and competenciy
are two ways to reduce risk. Sabrina also discussed performance evaluation as an important
component of risk management.
We had an exciting virtual networking session where you all had a chance to connect
with each other, your fellow laboratory professionals, get to know each other, and talk about
the OneLab Summit, training resources, and career development. And I want to say in
particular, I appreciate those who were willing to participate with us in that session. And that's
something that we want to carry through in the next year through our OneLab monthly events.
Erin Bowles shared the importance of a great biosafety plan. Erin talked us through the
components of a comprehensive biosafety plan and how that comprehensive plan serves as the
backbone for developing a strong culture of biosafety. She reminded us of the importance of
using near-misses and accidents as teachable moments. Erin talked about the different partners
we should have connections with who are critical to work with during a response.
She gave insights into how you can use and adapt your biosafety plan to prepare to
safely handle an emerging or re-emerging biological threat.
And finally, Dr. Teresa Wolfe walked us through how to interconnect people for
planning and preparedness. Teresa discussed why engagement is important for clinical and
public health laboratories. And she shared how to increase and maintain collaborations,
including connections with academic laboratory advisory groups, public health laboratory
operations and facilities staff, and the state supply warehouse. Teresa talked us through a
testing issue connected to a point-of-care instrument and how collaboration helped solve that
issue. She gave examples of how she was able to maintain important collaborations during the
COVID-19 pandemic, allowing her to provide Oregon Clinical Laboratory Consortium members
with critical updates.
Teresa shared several challenges and solutions, including some innovative solutions to
laboratory supply chain shortages during COVID-19.
Lastly, she shared some questions that you can ask yourself to help identify partners and
build important partnerships.
I hope you've had a chance to visit the OneLab Summit Virtual Exhibit Hall. If not, please
check it out on the OneLab Summit web page, which is Reach.CDC.gov/OneLabSummit. And
there's no WWW in that. It's just Reach.CDC.gov/OneLabSummit.
The exhibit hall features virtual posters highlighting various partner organizations,
programs, resources, successes, and more. We thank you for helping us make OneLab Summit
2024 such a success. If you missed any part of the Summit, I have good news for you. We are in
the process of making recordings of all the presentations available on the OneLab Summit web
page, and plan to email all of you who registered for the OneLab Summit as soon as those are
available.
So thank you again, whether you are a participant, a presenter, helped us with the
logistics, whatever your role was, we thank you so much for joining us. And above all, thank
everyone who works in the laboratories across the US to help keep us all safe and healthy every
day. Thank you.
