Newborn Screening, CDC, and Your Family

Families, partners, and newborn screening champions gathered at CDC to tour the newborn screening laboratories and share their experiences. Maintaining a sustainable newborn screening program here in the United States is incredibly important to me and not only sustaining that program but continuing to build it. When I was at the CDC and I was able to tour the laboratories, it was truly a joy for me. My professional background is as a medical laboratory scientist, so I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the facilities and the operations here. It was inspirational to see through the eyes of the scientists in the laboratories how important the work is that they're doing and be able to appreciate that in person and get a taste of what their day-to-day is like. Another facet of newborn screening is the quality control and quality assurance that the laboratories need and I believe that's CDC's responsibility to go and make sure that the labs, when they're performing the test, they're within the parameters and then also going to look to make sure like everything is being done properly. So CDC is like an oversight umbrella for the quality of newborn screening in the nation. They continue to work on their testing for homocystin area, a better assay. They came out of it, they've been able to develop it and in addition to this, this is something as an organization we had research grants available for and everyone who came to us said, you know, this is impossible, this task cannot be done, what you're asking for, there's just no way. So the fact that the CDC, you know, not only made this happen but they did this during the pandemic, they really fought to continue their work shows how much they're dedicated to helping patients despite any kind of circumstance. To me, what they have managed to accomplish is nothing short of a miracle. For more information about how CDC supports newborn screening, please visit cdc.gov forward slash newborn dash screening.