AMD Days 2024 Conference
Why it's so important to come together
I’m always excited the week before a conference or event. Especially now that I work from home all the time, the chance to meet with others who are just as excited about the same nerdy things is such a treat. Next week I’ll be in Atlanta (well, Decatur, but close enough) at the CDC/APHL Advanced Molecular Detection (AMD) Days conference. I haven’t attended this event before, but one thing I’m excited about is that it intentionally draws attendees from both the laboratory/bioinformatics and epidemiology. Another exciting aspect is that a number of the sessions will be available for remote attendance through Zoom! If you won’t have a chance to be in Atlanta, this is a great option to let you get insight on the hot AMD topics in the US. The subset of sessions that will be available for virtual attendance are listed out in the tables below.
Training: better together
One of the challenges with fostering better communication between lab/bioinformatics and epi is that we spend so much of our time in separate spaces. This can be physical (though some agencies co-locate, which is great!), but it’s also in the associations we join and the conferences and events we attend. In the US, epidemiologists typically attend the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) conferences/webinars/events, and lab/bioinformatics join the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) events. Each of these groups does a great job representing their members and providing content, but a lot can be missed when discussions about interconnected topics are happening in parallel spaces.
One area that has done a great job of bridging this divide this is the foodborne/enteric disease sphere. I attended the InFORM conferences several times along with PulseNet regional meetings. These events were widely advertised to members of CSTE, APHL, and the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA), and consist of a mix of joint sessions as well as discipline-specific tracks. This had the benefit of bringing together not only lab + epi from within a jurisdiction, but allowing people to see and learn from leaders in fields outside of their own disciplines.
The Integrated Foodborne Outbreak Response and Management (InFORM) Conference brings together the network of public health officials involved with foodborne and enteric disease outbreak response. This includes current federal, state, and local public health and environmental health specialists, epidemiologists, health communicators, and laboratory scientists. Held every two years, the conference consists of a keynote speaker, plenary and discipline-specific sessions, and poster presentations.
Another way that the enteric disease community promotes interdisciplinary collaboration is through the Epi-Ready Team Training. This multi-day training is taught by representatives from epidemiology, laboratory, and environmental health, again exposing all learners to experts both in their field and the other two fields. This training may be the first time an epidemiologist gets to hear directly from the lab what happens to a specimen once it enters the lab, or for the lab to see an environmental health professional walk through pictures of how they collect swabs during field investigations. This type of training can be helpful in building everyone up to a base level of knowledge and vocabulary that can greatly enhance collaboration.
Moving forward
Travel and trainings take significant amounts of time, and it is important for each discipline to have focused time to learn, share, and develop methods together. This needs to be balanced with the importance of cross-disciplinary exposure and training, which is so critical for building relationships and gaining alignment in priorities. Events like AMD Days and other regional AMD symposiums hold promise as spaces where everyone can come and learn about sequencing topics from many different perspectives and angles, and forge relationships with colleagues across both geography and field of work.
If you’ll be at AMD Days, please flag me down and say hello! If you’re not able to attend in person, check out the registration information for virtual attendance. I’ll have a bag full of commemorative magnets to hand out (way more fun than business cards, right?) so make sure to ask for one if you see me!
