For the most part illness is an individual problem. You get sick, you go to a doctor if it’s serious enough, and it eventually gets better with or without treatment. But sometimes your illness can be a public health issue. If you get something like influenza or food poisoning, there’s a good chance that information about your illness could help lots of other people stay healthy. At times like these “when new health risks emerge or well-known problems re-emerge, it is public health laboratories that analyze the threat and provide the answers needed to mount an effective response.” The Association of Public Health Laboratories is a non-profit organization based in Silver Spring, MD that “works to strengthen laboratories serving the public’s health in the US and globally.” The organization’s membership spans across all kinds of laboratories ranging from the public health labs mentioned in their name to environmental and agricultural labs. Many are government labs, but there are also corporate and non-profit labs included.

Check the Labs

To get a full understanding of what the Association of Public Health Laboratories does, you really need to understand what public health labs do. Luckily, the APHL has put together an About Public Health Labs page. Once you’ve read that, you’ll be better able to make sense of their programs and policy positions. But the best way to get a feel for why the APHL is an organization that you may want to work for is to check out their success stories–they’re the reason that promoting public health labs is so important. If you’d like to help the APHL deliver more success stories, you should check out their Jobs page. Right now they have a few positions that seem well suited for new and recent grads including Associate Grants Management Specialist, Associate Communications Specialist. There are a few more science-y positions, but they typically require a few years of experience.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

• APHL.org
• Jobs at Association of Public Health Laboratories
• About Association of Public Health Laboratories
• About Public Health Labs
• Association of Public Health Laboratories’ Programs
• Association of Public Health Laboratories News

What have you heard about the Association of Public Health Laboratories?

We've identified Association of Public Health Laboratories as having career opportunities in the following categories:

• all employers
• biology
• communications
• development
• grant writing
• laboratory
• Maryland
• medicine
• non-profit
• public health
• research
• science
• trade association

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