APHL Honors Dr. May Chu

SILVER SPRING, MD--(Marketwired - Jun 3, 2014) -  The Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) is pleased to announce that Dr. May Chu is the recipient of this year's Presidential Award. Dr. Chu was honored during a ceremony at the 2014 APHL Annual Meeting & Eighth Government Environmental Laboratory Conference in Little Rock, Arkansas.

The presidential award recipient is selected by the APHL president and given to individuals who have made significant contributions to the association's work to promote policies that strengthen public health laboratories.

Dr. Chu has served as a leader in public's health by advancing laboratory science and disease control systems in the US and throughout the world. She collaborated on development of the Laboratory Response Network and served as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) expert on plague and tularemia. This experience led to deployments in response to the anthrax letters and SARS, and field laboratory operations in Madagascar and Uganda. In 2004, she was seconded to the World Health Organization (WHO) to support outbreak response. During her six-years there, Dr. Chu took on responsibility for strengthening laboratory partnerships and biosafety among WHO member states under the International Health Regulations.

As director of CDC's Laboratory Systems, Policy and Practice Program Office, Dr. Chu was responsible for addressing cross-cutting issues affecting CDC's laboratory programs and the laboratory functions of front-line public health and clinical laboratories, both in the United States and internationally. She worked very closely with APHL in crafting the culture-changing Lab Efficiencies Initiative (LEI) and as an advocate for public health laboratory systems.

"We are extremely grateful for Dr. Chu's strong and unwavering support of public health laboratories and of APHL," said Scott Becker, executive director of APHL. "She is an advocate, a partner and a friend."

Dr. Chu currently serves as the assistant director of public health at the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President at the White House.

The Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) works to strengthen laboratory systems serving the public's health in the US and globally. APHL's member laboratories protect the public's health by monitoring and detecting infectious and foodborne diseases, environmental contaminants, terrorist agents, genetic disorders in newborns and other diverse health threats.

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