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A recent case from New York’s Newborn Screening Program (NBSP) highlights the essential partnership between state and county health departments in ensuring timely diagnosis and treatment for newborns with rare but serious conditions.

Raman spectroscopy, a widely used technique for qualitative chemical analysis, has taken a significant step forward into the realm of quantitative applications thanks to a new method co-developed by Dr. George Donati of the Wadsworth Center’s Division of Environmental Health Sciences, in collaboration with research partners in Brazil. 

Dr. Susan Madison-Antenucci, Chief of Bloodborne & Parasitic Diseases at the Wadsworth Center, spoke at the New York Medical College symposium titled “Vector borne Infections in the Hudson Valley – There’s More Than Just Lyme Out There.”The goal of the event was to raise awareness of the broader spectrum of tickborne diseases, supporting faster diagnosis and appropriate treatment for patients throughout the state.

Ms. Beverly Rauch, Clinical Laboratory Evaluation Program (CLEP) Director at the NYS DOH’s Wadsworth Center, delivered a featured presentation at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the Blood Banks Association of New York (BBANYS). 

The Obstacle Imagine the 35th Waste-Management and Education Research Conference (WERC), a national engineering competition, is rapidly approaching. Your team, Mycosorb Environmental, is using fungi to absorb metals from mining waters, but culture after culture gets contaminated and doesn’t grow well due to temperature and humidity issues. You finally get your mycoremediation columns up and running, and now you can’t find an instrument to identify and quantitate the metals. When you finally find one, it isn’t working!

New York State Department of Health Press Release Related links:

Five-Year Contract Enables Department to Advance Understanding of the Bacterium Causing Lyme DiseaseRead the New York State Department of Health press release.

Center Will Be a Major Contributor to Federal Influenza SurveillanceSee the New York State Department of Health Press Release

​Read about infectious disease fellow Majie Foster and how her "sense of service crossed from the military to the laboratory."

Effective January 1, 2025, the New York State Department of Health’s Newborn Screening Program’s policies regarding specimen and record retention will be changing. After that date, the program will store newborn screening records and specimens for 10 years. Previously, records and specimens were stored for up to 27 years. Beginning on December 15, 2024, requests for samples or records more than 10 years old will not be processed.  

Beverly Rauch, Deputy Director of the Division of Laboratory Quality Certification and Director of the Clinical Laboratory Evaluation Program (CLEP) was a guest on LabMind, an ARUP Laboratories’ education department podcast.  Beverly described the history of the NYS CLEP program and discussed how CLEP provides regulatory oversight of clinical laboratories.Click here to read more and listen to the podcast.

At this year's Laboratory Response Network for Biological Threats Preparedness (LRN-B) Technical Meeting, Biodefense Laboratory Director Michael Perry received the Excellence in Leadership Award for leadership "instrumental to the LRN-B mission" and for "significant contributions" to the field. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), along with the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL), also recognized Wadsworth Center's Biodefense Laboratory with Certificates of Appreciation for the following:

Funding from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will Expand Biomonitoring Efforts to Identify Harmful Chemicals in New Yorkers Click above to read the press release and below to learn more about the programs.

The Wadsworth Center has partnered with the Association of Public Health Laboratories to host the Public Health Lab Academy!

From environmental projects characterizing and quantitating contaminants in our water, food and even inside us, to infectious disease projects addressing antimicrobial resistance, “one of the world’s most urgent public health problems”, and studying factors that contribute to emerging infections, these seed grant-supported projects span a wide range of fields.

APHL Honors 2024 Newborn Screening Award Winners 

Wadsworth Center and SUNY Global Health Institute collaborate to create the New York State Global Health Interface Platform. The partnership is to provide training for future public health and biomedical research professionals and strengthen international grant opportunities. Read the New York State Department of Health Press Release

The study is published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The Department issues a joint Health Advisory to health care providers related to increased Oropouche virus activity and associated risk to travelers.

Across the globe, harmful algal blooms caused by cyanobacteria, also known as CyanoHABs, are increasing in frequency, intensity and duration, impacting drinking and recreational waters. In New York State (NYS), they have been reported in >200 lakes, and are responsible for increasing beach closures over the past decade, prompting the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) to expand lake monitoring programs to include CyanoHAB monitoring.

All newborns in New York State are screened for 52 disorders including all 37 on the Recommended Uniform Screening Panel (RUSP).  Because of the immense impact newborn screening has on public health, a committee of professionals continually evaluates conditions for addition to the RUSP. Pilot studies such as ScreenPlus can help determine if a new test for a disorder provides results that are beneficial to the health of the newborn and, therefore, the disorder should be added to the panel.