The Alaska Environment Health Association (AEHA) awarded YKHC’s Office of Environmental Health (OEH) with the Certificate of Merit Award in recognition of their significant contribution to environmental health.
The YKHC Office of Environmental Health, in partnership with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC), University of Kentucky, and the CDC Arctic Investigation Program showed remarkable leadership and innovation conducting wastewater testing in Bethel, Alaska over the past year. Their collaborative efforts to collect and analyze the local wastewater samples for SARS-CoV2, influenza, and RSV, serves as a model for other environmental public health programs around the State to follow.
Wastewater-based epidemiology has been used to measure pathogens loads at a community level. This is especially important when individual-level data is unavailable or under reported. The results help public health officials, health care providers, and community members make informed mitigation decisions. This information can crucial for curbing outbreaks and managing public health resources efficiently. Unfortunately, testing for pathogens in wastewater can be time consuming and expensive.
In October 2022, with guidance from the University of Kentucky, ANTHC, and the Public Health Agency of Canada, YKHC began collecting wastewater from a lift station in Bethel using a Moore swab, and analyzing them on a CLIA-Waived Cepheid GeneXpert Xpress in the YKHC Wastewater lab. Their goal was to provide an accurate, inexpensive way to detect pathogens in the local wastewater that took minimal time to collect and analyze. The team, which now includes the CDC Arctic Investigation Program then evaluated the correlation between the detected levels of SARS-CoV2, influenza, and RSV, and clinical data collected at the YKHC Delta Regional Hospital.
Through this initiative, the team demonstrated the ability to use wastewater to detect the level of viral pathogens circulating within populations in remote regions of Alaska using a process that can be performed locally with minimal time and cost. The team’s efforts have not only made a significant contribution to public health at the local level, but demonstrated a new potential tool that environmental health practitioners from around Alaska could use to help safeguarding community’s health.
The YK Delta Wastewater Surveillance team includes the following:
- Brian Lefferts, Alyssa Leary, Jackson Grimes, Michael Vicente, Bob White, Christine Richman, Jenny Pak (YKHC)
- James Keck (ANTHC)
- Dana Bruden (CDC)
- University of Kentucky
- City of Bethel.
This collaborative partnership is proudly awarded the 2023 AEHA Certificate of Merit Award. Their unwavering dedication to community health and their innovative approaches are truly deserving of this recognition.
You can see their latest results and recommendations on the YKHC website at https://www.ykhc.org/wastewater-sample-data/