A planning committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will organize and convene a two-day public workshop. During this workshop, invited participants from government, non-governmental organizations, and private sector organizations will explore the United States’ laboratory and testing responses to past, present, and potential health emergencies (e.g., COVID-19; monkey pox; chemical, radiological or nuclear threats), and will discuss the future of laboratory capabilities, capacities, and coordination for health emergencies response across public and private entities nationally. This workshop will focus on operational aspects of laboratory response, rather than technology development, including topics such as collaboration, coordination, information sharing, workforce, capacities and capabilities, and access.
Specifically the workshop may explore:

• The roles and responsibilities of public and private laboratories in response to health emergencies and changes in roles and responsibilities depending on the phase or scale of the emergency.
• Strategies, models, regulatory mechanisms, systems, and incentives to coordinate and optimize public-private partnerships in areas related, but not limited to: facilitating research innovation and translating methods/capabilities into practice, sustainable cost sharing, supply chain, rapid data and specimen sharing (e.g., across government, academia, commercial laboratories).
• Strategies for improving the integration of multi-source surveillance systems with national surveillance in collaboration with public and private domestic and international entities.
• Opportunities and partnerships to resolve unmet needs during response (e.g., materials, information systems, resource sharing, test development, research/characterization networks to assess risk of mutations/variants, real world assessment of diagnostics, workforce resilience).
• Testing and reporting strategies to promote and support health equity during response to health emergencies.

The planning committee will define the specific topics to be addressed, develop the agenda, and select and invite speakers and other participants. After the workshop, a designated rapporteur will prepare a proceedings-in-brief based on the presentations and discussions, in accordance with institutional guidelines.