Lab Quality Program Important to Newborn Screening

Learn about one of the nation’s most successful public health programs for newborn screening – CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health Lab Quality Program.

CDC’s Division of Laboratory Sciences in the National Center for Environmental Health plays an important role in newborn screening by offering the Newborn Screening Quality Assurance Program (NSQAP) to local, state, and international laboratories, and assuring newborn screening test results are as accurate as possible.

Shortly after a baby is born, a health professional takes a few drops of blood from the baby’s heel. The blood sample is sent to a state laboratory to be analyzed for several severe disorders. This process, known as newborn screening, is one of the nation’s most successful public health programs because the early identification of severe disorders has led to timely intervention and life-saving treatments for newborn children. A big part of the success of newborn screening in the laboratory is CDC’s NSQAP. This voluntary, non-regulatory program helps state health departments and their laboratories maintain and enhance the quality of test results.

Joanne Mei is working with bloodspots in the CDC Newborn Screening Quality Assurance Program (NSQAP) laboratory.

Joanne Mei leads NSQAP in the Newborn Screening and Molecular Biology Branch in CDC’s Division of Laboratory Sciences, National Center for Environmental Health. The program’s role, she says, is simple: “We exist to help newborn screening labs minimize the risk of making errors.”