Workforce Action Alliance

And I'm excited to present our two speakers. 
Our first speaker is Miss Tammy Zinsmeister. 
Tammy has dedicated two decades of her life to COLA’s mission, serving in various roles as staff 
member and external advisor. While working for a physician's organization in the early 90's 
Tammy became an expert in the federal CLIA law and regulations. 
In 1993, she joined COLA to launch the first government relations office and in her current role 
as a chief innovation officer, Tammy combines her knowledge of economics, policy, business, 
and entrepreneurialism with her skills to guide the development of new business ideas to 
advance COLA’s mission. 
Tammy is also responsible for initiating and sustaining relationships with physician 
organizations, laboratory stakeholders, and health plans to ensure COLA is valued and 
recognized as a high-quality accreditation service provider for laboratories nationwide. 
She received a Bachelor of Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Studies with a focus in Economics 
and Political Science from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. 
She is certified as a professional in managed care by the American Academy of Health Care 
Management. 
Our next speaker is Miss Kathy Nucifora. 
Kathy joined COLA as the Accreditation Division Manager in November 2009 and served into 
her promotion to Chief Operating Officer in 2019. 
Before joining COLA, she held the position of Laboratory Advisor for the University of Maryland 
Medical Center Midtown Campus, and Laboratory Administrator for the large, for a large multi 
special specialty medical clinic with over 100 providers and 30 clinical departments in 
Hutchinson, KS. 
Kathy created and implemented new quality processes and procedures at the University of 
Maryland Medical Center. 
In addition to managing the day-to-day operations of the laboratory, she led a multidisciplinary 
task force to implement molecular testing for MRSA and implemented a positive patient 
identification system via handheld computers and helped lead the Laboratory and Nursing 
Process Improvement Committee. 
Kathy has also served as adjunct faculty at the Community College of Baltimore County for their 
medical, for their medical laboratory technicians' program. 
Our next presenters is Miss Kathy Nucifora and Tammy Zinsmeister. 
Good afternoon, everyone. 
Can you hear me OK? 
I'd like to thank the One Lab Network for allowing Tammy and myself to talk about something 
we're very proud to be a part of, and that is the Workforce Action Alliance. 
So how did we get here? 
I'm sure you've all heard the stories about laboratories who are unable to find enough qualified 
staff to meet the needs of their patients. 
We all know that the shortage of laboratory professionals has been simmering for many years. 
The public health emergency seems to have exacerbated the shortage, not only among 
laboratory professionals, but among all healthcare professionals. 
We noticed several years back that in the conferences that we attend, suddenly, not suddenly 
but gradually over time, the workforce shortage has become a common topic at conferences. 
So, we are at a critical juncture in the workforce shortage. 
There are some things that we do know. 
We need to know more, and we'll talk about the need to gather more data here in a minute. 
And although several programs for medical laboratory scientists and medical laboratory 
technicians have closed in recent years, some of us were surprised to learn that the number of 
programs actually grew modestly between 2013 and 2022. 
So, there are a lot of questions to be asked. 
Are there enough applicants to fill all the positions? 
And geographically, across the United States, are there programs that have many, many more 
applicants than they can accommodate? 
There are a lot of questions that need to be asked, but the bottom line is, will the number of 
programs meet the need, the demand in the future for laboratory professionals? 
We have some really good data coming out of the Bureau of Labor and Statistics and in that 
survey, they put clinical laboratory technologists and technicians together in one group. 
They do expect the need for laboratory professionals to grow and to outpace the need of 
average, the average need for other occupations, and that could be due to technology 
increases. 
It could be due to the aging population and the baby boomers entering the Medicare system. 
We've seen estimates that there are more than 24,000 vacancies for clinical laboratory 
professionals, and that I've seen numbers even much higher than that. 
And there are many additional vacancies expected to be a result of the need to replace folks 
who are not only retiring but leaving the labor workforce in laboratory professionals for other 
reasons, whether it could be for burnout or leaving to pursue another healthcare profession, or 
another profession entirely. 
And I know there are, there are challenges with salaries among laboratory professionals. 
The ASCP has done some wonderful data gathering and some things that we found out from a 
recent survey that they did is that 80% of the laboratories who responded to their survey have 
indicated that they've had difficulty in recruiting enough qualified staff over the last year. 
Almost 70% reported that the demands for testing was increased over the public health 
emergency, which makes a lot of sense, and there was also a dramatic increase in the need to 
hire contract staff. 
We also know from the ASCP survey that almost a third of those responding to the survey 
reported that they plan to change careers, either going to another field or retiring. 
And it's important to point out that the public health emergency did not only affect medical 
laboratories, but it had a dramatic impact on the public health laboratory workforce. 
Nearly one-third of the public health workforce reported that they were involved in the 
response to the, nearly one-third of the public health workforce reported that they're 
considering leaving their organization in the next year. 
And that's pretty remarkable. 
39% stated that the pandemic influenced their decision to leave the profession. 
So, these are, these are quite alarming statistics. 
So having heard over the years a lot about the laboratory workforce shortage, during our 
annual conference in 2022, we thought it would be a good idea to have a panel discussion 
about the workforce shortage. 
And this panel was made-up of a program director, a couple of students, an employer, and a 
recruiter just to talk about what, what are the challenges of the workforce out there, what is 
being done, what should be done and what could be done? 
So, we had a really good discussion, a panel discussion. 
The audience was very engaged. 
And at the end of it, we asked the question, what can we do? 
And overwhelmingly the response was, bring everybody together, let's all work together 
to address the workforce shortage. 
So, at COLA, we kind of raised our hand and decided that we would step up to the challenge. 
We gathered some representatives, some leaders, and executives from some amazing 
organizations to form a planning committee, to form what we have named the Workforce 
Action Alliance. 
We invited many top-level leaders and executives from laboratory organizations, from 
educational programs, from employers. 
We invited people representing high school counselors, and we invited a very sundry cross
section of professionals who have a stake in the laboratory workforce. 
The organizations that are represented on the planning committee for the Workforce Action 
Alliance include the people here you see on the screen, and they represent APHL, AAB and 
NILA, ASCLS, ASCP, AABB, ASM, CDC, NSH, and COLA. 
So, you can see we all have a vested interest in addressing the workforce shortage and have 
come together to try to identify what we can do together. 
Now, we're not the only ones working on this issue. 
Many of you are aware, and some of the similar, same organizations are a part of the MPHL, 
the Medical and Public Health Laboratory Coalition, which is doing some fantastic work with 
their industry partners in advocacy for the laboratory profession. 
So, our intent in forming the Workforce Action Alliance was not to compete with or work in 
silos alongside another group, but rather to cooperate and work together. 
So, we've got people who are involved in both of these. 
We communicate with each other so that we can share who's doing what, share information 
and work as parallel organizations toward the same goal. 
The Workforce Action Alliance, as the name suggests, was really intended to come up with 
some specific actions that we can roll up our sleeves and get to work on. 
So, we never felt for a minute that we were working against or contradicting or duplicating any 
of these other organizations that are working on it. 
And certainly, I want to recognize the OneLab Summit and the OneLab Network because the 
things that they've been doing to bring together laboratory professionals in both public health 
and the medical field has just been nothing short of amazing. 
So, it is a separate meeting and a summit, but we communicate with the others. 
We make sure that we share our results of what we've decided and what we're working on so 
that we can as an industry hopefully address the workforce shortage. 
So, at our next annual conference in 2023, we held our first Workforce Action Alliance Summit. 
It was one full day where we had approximately 65 executive level staff people from a variety 
of laboratory organizations and as I said, educational institutions, governmental institutions, 
and high school counselors. 
And the purpose was to inspire an alliance and community of practice to accelerate and 
replicate existing initiatives and to explore new initiatives to address the laboratory workforce 
shortage. 
And during that summit, we heard some wonderful initiatives that have been undertaken at 
some educational facilities and we brainstormed about how we can build on what they're doing 
and move forward to address the shortage. 
These are some of the topics that were discussed at the summit. 
We broke up into different groups and as you can see, we addressed a wide variety of topics, 
recognizing that we can't undertake all of the obstacles at once that are out there and we can't 
solve this overnight. 
But we thought, what we can do is select a few initiatives or priorities that we can start working 
on over the next 12 months and then come back together to either talk about continuing them 
or develop other things that we can do. 
So, at that summit, at the end of the day, we came up with three priorities that we wanted to 
work on together. 
One of them is about strengthening the data, and you'll hear about that in a minute. 
We've got a lot of good data, as I have said. 
We've got data from NAACLS, we've got data from the BLS, we’ve got good data from ASCP and 
other places. 
But we need more data, trending data, and we need more data to help us advocate for our 
profession among policy makers so that educational institutions understand and communicate 
with us about the needs. 
And there's just some data that we need more of, and I'll talk about that in a minute. 
The second priority that you see on there is working together to communicate career paths. 
This is a big deal. 
I'm sure you've heard over and over at your facilities about, you know, my daughter, my cousin, 
my niece, nephew didn't. 
They're not even aware of what careers are available in laboratory science. 
So, we, it's kind of a cliche where we call ourselves the unsung heroes. 
There are a lot of unsung heroes in healthcare, but the laboratory professionals aren't real well 
known among people who are choosing their careers. 
And that's really a shame because it, as we all know, I'm preaching to the choir. 
An extremely rewarding career in laboratory science is out there and available. 
But perhaps the message isn't getting to all the right people who are making decisions about 
their careers. 
And you'll hear from Tammy in a little bit about all the wonderful things led by Chris Bean, who 
you just heard from, all the wonderful things they're doing to communicate the potential career 
paths for new and transitioning professionals. 
And finally, we've recognized over the years that there is some confusion out there about what 
we call ourselves. 
We've got a lot of different terms and we decided to talk about how should we refer to 
laboratory careers so that across-the-board people know who we are and what we do. 
So each of the work groups for the initiatives was assigned a leader. Dr. James Crawford, who 
I'm sure many of you know, is the leader of the first work group over the last year. 
And the goal was to strengthen the data, to understand the laboratory workforce. 
What they've accomplished already is absolutely amazing because we did have a representative 
from NAACLS on that team, Marissa James. 
And what we were able to do is put our heads together. 
The team put their heads together to add some questions to gather additional information 
on the annual NAACLS survey. 
Now I understand that that data will be shortly available, hopefully at the time of the next 
summit. 
Our annual summit for the Workforce Action Alliance will be May 7th, if not shortly thereafter. 
We'll get some information and then we can look at that data to see what it, What does it tell 
us, how are things changing over time? 
And what additional information can we provide to policy makers to help get some support for 
our profession, whether it's in the form of tuition reimbursement or loan forgiveness or grants 
or things like that, to help make our profession that we all love so much more attractive to 
young people and transitioning students. 
So, strengthening the data will help with advocacy and evaluating the effectiveness of their 
investments. 
And we're real eager to hear a report out from each of these groups at the summit that's 
coming up on May 7th. 
Now, at this point, I'm going to hand it over to my colleague Tammy Zinsmeister, who has 
participated, along with Chris Bean, who you've just heard from, in this. 
This turned out to be a large undertaking and they've just done some amazing work. 
So, Tammy, I'll let you talk about the Career Pathways Initiative. 
Great, Kathy. While I'm trying to start my video here, it says the video cannot start because the 
host has stopped it. 
Give her, give her a second. 
Oh, there we go. 
Thank you very much. 
Kathy thanks for the opportunity to join you today to talk a little bit about this particular 
initiative, communicating career pathways for new and transitioning professionals. 
I've been participating in this group since last May with Christine Bean, who's just been a 
wonderful collaborator and leader on this particular initiative. 
We actually gave everybody the opportunity to sign up to work on some of these initiatives and 
we had 30 people decide that they wanted to participate, which was essentially half the group 
that attended the summit, that were excited about being a part of this. 
We had certainly laboratory science professionals. 
We had educators sign up for this particular initiative. In addition to COLA, other accrediting 
organizations joined this particular initiative. 
We had recruiters certainly led by Christine and other public health leaders came on board to 
work on this particular initiative. 
We had CDC participate with us and also several employers. 
So, it was just a great group. At the actual summit, each of these initiatives, we developed 
action plans. As Kathy noted this group is about action and getting things done. 
And we've decided that in May when we come together here just in a few weeks, we'll look 
back in, in the morning of our summit and say, well, how much did we get done? 
Because it really is a measure of our success and the value of coming together for that day is 
really about, did we accomplish what we wanted to accomplish? This particular group, because 
it was so large, I worked with Chris and Edna Garcia 
was on this as well as well, as staff to try to look at maybe we needed to divide this group into 
some smaller groups. 
That helps with scheduling, and it also assisted us in kind of getting more strategic around some 
certain areas of focus that we wanted to have. 
So, this group actually formed into four subgroups. 
One subgroup was really focused on raising awareness of careers in laboratory science, 
specifically with high school students. 
We also had a subgroup that formed out of this group called Academic Partnerships, which is 
really focused on strengthening connections between laboratory professionals and on-campus 
academic advisors and career counselors. 
We had a subgroup and Chris kindly led this subgroup as well, that would really work on 
visualizing career paths. 
And it was, it's really thinking about both the educational requirements and certifications that 
might be needed for various career paths. 
And also looking at the breadth and depth, you know, thinking beyond traditional paths within 
a career, but actually looking where you might be able to branch and take a totally different 
direction. 
So, kind of broadening the view and looking at the breadth and depth of all the careers that 
would be available in with a laboratory science focus. 
And also looking at those career paths from the perspective of guiding people that are already 
in their career, maybe they’re mid-career, maybe they're moving into kind of the last season of 
their career. 
But the opportunity to look at what might be next for them. 
This particular subgroup also looked at some retention, which we're going to pick up at the 
upcoming summit. 
I appreciate what Chris was saying earlier about the importance of well-being, creating 
environments where people can really thrive, not overworking, having boundaries is all part 
of successful retention strategies. 
So, we'll be picking that up in May for further discussion. 
And then there was a subgroup that was focused on funding, funding in terms of scholarships, 
loan forgiveness programs, etc., for students, and also looking at funding for educational 
programs to basically build their programs. 
So, let's start with this first subgroup. Kathy's already pulled that slide forward. 
This has been, what can I say, this has been a very passionate group of people. 
I think if there's one thing that gets laboratory scientists excited is to go out and talk to the next 
generation. 
We've had a lot of really great discussion about how to reach out to young people effectively. 
Certainly, conferences is a big, a big part of that. 
ASCP, who we've talked a lot with about conferences, actually attended the American School 
Counselors Association meeting last year in 2023. 
And one of the things they discovered is very few people, very few high school counselors are 
aware of the laboratory science profession. 
So, they want to go again this year. 
And through our collaboration within the Workforce Action Alliance Summit and the Medical 
and Public Health Laboratory Coalition, there are a couple of organizations that will be going 
with ASCP (COLA is one of them) to attend that national event. 
We've also found that people on this particular subgroup have actually attended the state 
chapter meetings of ASCA, which is a really great opportunity. 
And then we also worked with a member of our subgroup on identifying other opportunities, 
other meetings to reach out to. Because it's great to reach out to school counselors, but we 
need to reach out to administrators, superintendents, science teachers, school boards, STEM 
festivals. 
It was also recommended by one of the people on our group that particularly in some of the 
rural areas, reaching out to the public library is a great place to go and talk with the librarian 
about how we can engage young people in their career. 
Another thing that we've talked a lot about in this group is site visits. 
So often we think about trying to arrange those at hospital employers in the area. 
So, you introduce the young people, you want to take them to see a laboratory. 
There was hospitals have opened their doors to that. 
COVID did create a lot of limitations on that. 
But the other thing that maybe you don't think about is to actually take student groups to your 
local public health laboratory. 
So, we've had the opportunity to learn through Denise Toney about how to do that effectively 
and she's been a great addition to the team. 
She's from Virginia and she is part of the public health laboratory there. 
She's just a tremendous and valuable asset, member of the team. 
The second thing that we're working on is a virtual toolkit. 
So, a lot of organizations, well, I would say a number of professional organizations at the 
national level have created tools for how you would engage and do outreach with high schools. 
But we're not sure that those are readily available to everyone. 
So, the idea here is to actually create a toolkit, and these would be things, and that would be 
things like template letters to your local principal of your high school. 
It would be slide decks that would be ready to be available. 
If you're a laboratory professional and you just want to go into a school, you just take your own 
initiative. 
You would at least have a starting place, guidelines for arranging tours, things like that. 
So, all the tools that you might need to take initiative in your community is really what 
we mean by the virtual toolkit. 
So, we're working on that. 
And then we're also looking at ways to reach, what we learned. 
And Don Taylor, who's on the subgroup and a few other people have learned is that there are 
these career readiness platforms on Xello, Gladeo, Worktour. 
These are platforms that educators and school counselors and students use to assess kind of 
aptitude, interest you know, would a student thrive in a particular environment? 
And what we've learned in talking with some of those career readiness platforms is that they 
don't have a very robust area to really convey a profession in laboratory science and some, 
some of the platforms don't even have it on their list. 
So, the idea is we may be able to reach more students through these types of platforms. 
So, we'll be looking at that as well in our year two of activity. 
And then we've been trying to look at and look at data around where are some of the really 
underserved communities. 
And we found a great database through the Department of Education that will allow us to really 
look at how do we reach some high schools that maybe aren't necessarily touched with these 
types of opportunities that we could reach out to based on need and really get some 
information out about the career in laboratory science. 
I think the strength in the data group when they come back and maybe they can help us 
pinpoint some communities that are, maybe don't have enough students applying for the 
programs there. 
That might be an opportunity to use that information to maybe go and look at some of the high 
schools and be strategic and targeted about reaching out to those groups. 
So again, a lot of enthusiasm in this group and I'm pretty sure this group is going to continue 
another year and pick up where we we're, where we're leading off this year. 
Next slide, Kathy. The next group is academic partnerships and primarily this is a smaller 
subgroup. It's primarily the educators that are working on this and they are looking at how they 
can get more information from the career counselors and scientific or academic advisors on 
campus particularly within their school, their, their college or university to see how they can 
create better connections and bridges between laboratory professionals, their programs 
included, and the on-campus counselors and advisors. So that is a smaller group working on 
that. 
It's a very important group and they're working on trying to create those bridges. 
Next slide, the funding subgroup. 
So, the funding subgroup is really looking at a couple of things. 
One is working to identify scholarships and loan forgiveness programs for students. 
So that's a big part of it. 
They've generated a list. 
There's about six people working in this group, and they've generated a list of those 
opportunities. 
And we'll be figuring out where we can house that. 
How do we get that disseminated? 
How do we keep it up to date? 
And also, there are a couple of people working on where is funding for educational programs 
specifically. 
We did hear at the summit last year that some state legislatures are funding things, 
investments in medical and laboratory science. 
And certainly, where there's a push at the federal level within Congress to try to get some 
additional funding to try to support the investment in either scholarships, additional funding for 
loan forgiveness programs, or other things to try to help the profession grow, grow its 
profession in the coming years. 
And then we are also looking at the HRSA grants. 
Up until this point, HRSA grants have not been available to Allied health educational programs. 
But there is an initiative in the Senate to try to put some money in that particular grant option 
that would allow allied health, which would include laboratory science, to actually apply for 
grants for their, community to strengthen their programs or expand their programs. 
Next slide, Kathy. This is the fourth of the subgroups and Christine, as I said,  
has been leading this with some other people that are participating. 
And this group's really been trying to do an inventory of all the kind of resources that are out 
there that really showcase the pathways. 
There are a number of organizations that have those things already going, and you know, 
looking to see if we can think about it holistically. 
And you know, we have public health putting some great information out there. 
You have ASCP and ASCLS putting great information out there, as well as some of the 
specialty professional organizations. 
But what is kind of the unified, you know, if you were to create one thing that somebody could 
look at and say, wow, you know, this is there's a lot of opportunity in this profession. 
How do we kind of pull it all together? 
They are also working on a webinar where they're going to be highlighting career pathways. 
So, inviting people that are in their careers to have in a webinar/podcast to share their 
path, their journey and to offer that webinar to STEM leads at colleges and universities. 
I think it's a great, great way to do that. 
And then there's a small group of us, it's basically me and a couple of other people trying to 
inventory and look at what are the some of the existing retention strategies. 
And also, to look at that across generations because what might be important in my generation 
is one thing, but what might be important in another generation that follows my generation, 
they may, they may value other things. 
So be mindful of you know depending on how long you've been in your career and your 
worldview in terms of what you grew up with and the environment that you were in. 
You may have different things that are more important to you than you know what I what I 
value. 
So having some appreciation and certainly you hear the theme of work balance, work-life 
balance with the generations that are, you know, the X and the and the Y. 
But I think we're also seeing it at the baby boomers as well, how important work-life balance is. 
I think that's something that we all share across the generations. 
And so, I think that it's really good to look at it from that perspective. 
Next on slide, Kathy. This is some great work. 
If you're not familiar with What's My Next, ASCP has a great website. 
I would encourage you to look at that where they actually are building and making available 
information for people within the profession, people looking at the profession as well as 
educators. 
And I just think it's a great site. 
And the next slide, please. 
And of course, Christine and the amazing work that APHL is doing around really promoting 
fellowships. 
And this is on the funding side as well in terms of fellowship programs and internship programs. 
And since I've started doing a lot of research on this and I've been following all of this on 
LinkedIn, there's so many great initiatives out there that we can learn from and that we can 
help others maybe through the virtual toolkit or just in just in getting the word out of what 
other people are doing. 
There's just amazing, amazing initiatives underway that are happening to by professionals such 
as yourselves to grow the next generation. 
Kathy, I think that's it. 
Thank you, Tammy. 
That's really exciting. 
My hat's off to you and all of those sub-teams who are doing such great work. 
So, the third initiative that we undertook was about how do we call ourselves, what do we, 
what do we talk about when we talk about careers for laboratorians? 
We mentioned a little bit earlier that there are 24, 30 thousand vacancies at any given time in 
laboratories. And the pipeline of the schools, the some 600 programs, there's approximately 
9,000 new professionals coming out every year. 
And if you look at what would be the normal rate of attrition due a retirement, we're barely 
keeping up with attrition from retirement. 
That does not account for people who are leaving the profession for other reasons, for burnout 
or whatever, and it doesn't account for the expectation that the demand is going to grow. 
So, we talk a lot about different ways to attract people to the profession and there's been a lot 
of controversy and, I might add, some confusion about what, who are we, what do we call 
ourselves? 
So, as we had these discussions at the summit, we talked about how do we refer to ourselves 
and we used the example of nursing. 
So, a high school student or a college student may decide, I'm going into nursing, and 
everybody knows basically what that is. 
And everybody also knows that there are various levels of professionals under nursing careers. 
There's RNs and LPNs. There's school nurses, there's cardiac nurses, there's emergency room 
nurses, pediatric nurses, a lot of different variety of careers under the umbrella term of nursing. 
So, what we wanted to do with this group is to strengthen our profession's standing and solidify 
how we refer to ourselves to eliminate confusion amongst young people who might be trying to 
decide their careers. 
So, this was, the aim was to elevate the public awareness of our overarching profession. 
Now, this was never meant to contradict any of the good work that's been done by other 
organizations to name our credentialing, whether it's medical laboratory science or clinical 
laboratory science. 
We didn't want to come up with something that would further add confusion. 
And I might add that this team, there was also a lot of passion. 
There was a lot of discussion and a lot of opinions, some other suggested terms that came up. 
But in the end, we decided that whatever we used to call our profession, we didn't want it to be 
something that conflicted with the good work that's already been done. 
So, in the end, we decided that we would like to promote "laboratory science careers" as kind 
of an umbrella term, an overarching term that would be inclusive of public health, of medical 
laboratory professionals. 
And we listed up there several of the things that you can do as a laboratory science career. 
Couldn't possibly put them all up there. But we shared this information with the other work 
groups, and we would like to promote the term "laboratory science" as an umbrella term for 
this type of career, knowing then that students can choose to be more specific. 
They can go to school for two years or four years or six years. 
They can specialize in chemistry or biology or whatever it is. 
They can work in public health. 
They can work in medical laboratories. 
But we want the younger generation and people who are looking for new careers to 
understand what we mean by laboratory science careers, kind of similar to the way we talk 
about nursing. 
So again, this is meant to be inclusive of all the different career options that are available, and 
we will use it. 
For example, with when we speak to high school counselors, they talk about careers in nursing. 
We want to encourage them and provide them with good information about careers available 
in laboratory science. 
This was never meant to conflict with or undermine other credentialing terms or terms used by 
states for licensure reasons. 
So, the term medical laboratory scientists or clinical laboratory scientists, it all fits. 
It's the last thing that, you know, I think we would have been, you know, probably taking a step 
backwards if we came up with some term that kind of didn't really fit with the good work that's 
already been done. 
So, after a lot of discussion and a lot of alternatives being brought up, we want to promote the 
term laboratory science to describe our careers. 
I just put a snapshot up there because you may have seen these articles. 
There's just a lot of good work published by these organizations about how to call our careers. 
And the reason, you know, why would we want to do this? 
Again, because it's just if you're a high school student trying to choose a career and you have all 
different kinds of names out there and you're not sure what's what, we kind of think that could 
be a detractor. 
Now one of the challenges that we've got at the Workforce Action Alliance is sustaining our 
efforts, because there have been some very good efforts started in the past to address the 
laboratory workforce shortage that have done some really great work but haven't been able to 
continue. 
So, we've committed to doing a couple of different things. 
We do publish a what we call a proceedings document that documents everything that we did, 
everything that we decided, and that when we follow up everything that we've accomplished, 
what we want to continue. 
So, we're going to document our activities so that it holds us accountable. 
We don't want this to be something that we start and can't continue. 
So that's why there are many committed and enthusiastic organizations participating in the 
Workforce Action Alliance. 
It can't be the work of one organization. 
It's not about one organization. 
It's about all of us working together. 
So, you can find the proceedings document at the website listed there and I believe that was 
also sent out. 
We will also publish a proceedings document following our second annual Workforce Action 
Alliance Summit that will be held on May 7th... and it will be in Destin, Fort Walton Beach in 
Florida. 
We have held our Workforce Action Alliance Summit kind of adjacent to our annual education 
event and it's kind of obvious as to why we would do that. 
Planning an onsite meeting and gathering people together is a whole lot of work. 
So, to add the Workforce Action Alliance Summit just before our educational event makes it 
easier on everyone as we book hotel blocks and reserve rooms and things like that. 
So, I think that's the end of our slide presentation and we're doing really well on time. 
So, we can open it up to questions. 
[Branch] Thank you so much again. 
We'll take a few minutes to answer as many questions as possible. 
If we do not answer your question today, we'll do our best to respond via email 
if you submitted your, if you didn't submit your question anonymously. 
If you have any questions after today, please email onelab@cdc.gov. OK, let's get to the first 
question. What do you think the current methods used for measuring and monitoring 
workforce, monitoring our workforce and this one has like three parts to it. 
They want to know also if there's some, the validity issues, if the data sources were, already 
have more effectiveness. 
So, I think they just want to kind of want to know like, what do you think of the current 
measures, measures used to, to monitor the workforce. 
Yeah, so there there's some good measures coming in. 
We've mentioned the ASCP vacancy survey, which I believe is out there now and I would 
encourage you anyone to share that link with your colleagues at laboratories because the more 
data we get, the better it is. 
NAACLS always provides good data. 
The Bureau of Labor Statistics provides good data, but we can improve on it. 
For example, we don't have a lot of good information about the number of laboratory 
professionals that are coming in from degrees other than MLS or associate’s degrees. 
We've got people with degrees in chemistry and biology. 
So, we've got a lot of good data, but we can do better. 
We've also met with a group that collects data from hospitals and they're willing to share their 
data with us. 
So, we want to try to get as much data as possible. 
But the data that's out there, I have no, I have nothing bad to say about the good people who 
have collected all this data over the years. 
It's, I mean it's amazing that they've done this. 
We just need to look at it a little deeper, decide what does it mean, how is it trending and 
what are we going to do about it? 
This question, they want to know. 
Do you think that the decrease in the lab fees by health plans paid to clinical labs affects the 
opportunities of salary raises and leads to lab scientists’ shortage? 
[Nucifora] Well, it certainly doesn't help. 
So, we've all you know been advocating for, to stop the decreases in the clinical laboratory fee 
schedule and we, it's no secret that salaries are an impediment or a barrier to getting a lot of 
good people to choose careers in laboratory science. 
So somewhere we've got to square those things: reimbursements being cut and not having 
enough money to pay our professionals. 
You know that's a tough one to tackle. 
But I would say the short answer is yes. 
I do think that the, the decrease in laboratory reimbursement is going to make it, make it 
difficult for, and I understand the challenges of health systems and hospitals, they have a 
budget, I get that. 
But it is going to make it difficult for us to overcome the salary deficits that are there for 
laboratory professionals. 
When you take into consideration the degree of education that we have, it's going to, it's going 
to make it difficult for sure. 
This is a good one. 
Will strengthening the data help lead to increased options for education programs? 
As far as they can tell, Oregon only has two options. 
One is an MLS for four-year program and the MLT two-year program for the entire state. 
They really struggle with how they should advertise this career to high school students when 
there's no path for them to go into this career. 
Oh, what an amazing piece of information there about Oregon. 
I didn't know that, but we hope so. 
We hope we can glean some more data about where geographically the programs are and 
where the programs get more applicants than they can accommodate and where they don't get 
enough applicants because we have a mix of those situations. 
So hopefully if we can provide enough data, we can convince educational institutions of the 
need for laboratory scientists. 
We've also talked about, and we're nowhere near a solution on this, but we thought, we've also 
talked about a possible reciprocity type or agreements so that if there are more students than 
there are slots in the programs in one area, but another area doesn't have enough students to 
fill their slots, that maybe we can arrange some kind of reciprocity to get the students to where 
the programs are. 
But yes, that would be our hope, that we would have better data to show educational 
institutions the demand for laboratory science professionals. 
Great. This is something that we experience on our network calls, is with international 
graduates asking for you know more resources. 
And this one is actually saying he actually wanted to know why not source for laboratory 
scientists and technicians outside of the US. Nigeria has a lot of young graduates looking for 
jobs and so that I know that's a huge challenge. 
Yep. 
We did have an organization called PAMET participate in the Workforce Action Alliance Summit 
because there are a lot of really good laboratory scientists coming over from the Philippines. 
And what has the success, what can the success of the that program be? 
What can we learn from that to help other professionals in other countries? 
So, we haven't gotten to that level to where we've been discussing other countries, but we are 
interested in knowing what the situation is in other countries and how can we, how can we 
match the two? 
Tammy, do you have anything to add to that? 
The only thing I would add is there are a couple of people that are in the alliance that have 
talked about the visa program, you know, understanding a little bit more about how that works 
and, you know seeing, and I think this will apply to not just laboratory science but all the 
healthcare professions about how do we open it up so that people can that have the 
qualifications and want to come here to work would be able to do that? 
My understanding of that from what I've heard is that it's a little bit of a backlog getting those 
visas served for people to be able to do that. 
So yeah, I think it's a probably an opportunity for sure. 
Yeah. Thank you for the question. 
Yes. And I saw someone in here dropped some, Puerto Rico's kind of having a similar issue. 
This is an interesting one. 
Let's see. What if any thought has been, hold on, this keeps moving,  
given to create unified tracking database of our professionals? 
Evidence has shown that the BLS and OEWS database have validity issues surrounding their 
collection and reporting of data for allied health professions. 
So, I guess the question is, 
has it been talked about having a unified tracking database for the professions?  
I don’t think so. Tammy, are you aware? 
[The only thing that I'm aware of with regard to BLS is that because of the combining the four 
year or two years into one category in terms of careers does kind of distort the data. 
There is an effort by some of the national professional organizations that are meeting with BLS 
to try to make sense of that. 
I think it's going to be a great conversation for the summit in May in terms of understanding 
what kind of progress can be made on that. But I haven't heard anybody that's involved in that 
talk about starting a new initiative to collect that would result in a unified tracking database. 
It's an interesting idea. 
We can certainly pass it along and I'll, Kathy we should make a note of that and talk a little bit 
with Jim about that. 
So, I think what they're suggesting is, is there just an opportunity for somebody to start to 
gather that information on who that somebody would be. 
But I think it's, I think what we're they're saying there is maybe the profession shouldn't rely on 
others and should start to look at gathering its own information, not to take away from as what 
ASCP does and others. 
I see the point about and the questions that it may not be frequent enough or have enough 
that's needed to really make policy decisions. 
So, it's what's noted here in the Q&A. 
So yeah, thank you. 
You're welcome. 
We'll take one last question. This person says, from personal experience, I've only seen, they 
haven't seen many jobs for entry-level, new laboratory science professionals. 
Has this been addressed at the meetings within your organization? 
Well, we have talked about the fact that it's not uniform across the board. 
I have heard that a lot of the openings in some of the, you know that we've heard that there's a 
shortage in rural areas and there's urban deserts. 
And then we've heard about some areas where if you're a new laboratory science professional 
coming out and you're looking for your first job that sometimes the jobs that are available are 
on the night shift, which I've worked the night shift. 
I think we've all worked the night shift at one time or another. 
So, I think it varies depending on the location and where you are. 
But we hear quite the opposite not only from our laboratories and from the people 
participating in the Workforce Action Alliance, that they can't find laboratory professionals to 
fill their job openings. 
So maybe we need to dig into why that is or there could be areas where there's, 
I know at one time, I worked in Kansas for quite a while and in Kansas we didn't feel the 
workforce shortage like the rest of the country was until now. 
I hear they're feeling it now. 
So it could be that it just fluctuates and varies from one part of the country to another. 
So, it's not a uniform thing, you might find, and I think we could probably get some data on that 
from the ASCP vacancy survey. 
You can probably tell what areas of the country have more vacancies than others. 
Great, thanks, Kathy and Tammy, for sharing great data. 
And I'm excited for the work that COLA is doing, its commitment to helping address the 
workforce, the laboratory workforce shortage. 
Now we'll turn it back over to Blanche.