Common Challenges and Identified Solutions for State Newborn Screening Programs during COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, state newborn screening programs faced challenges to ensure this essential public health program continued to function at a high level. In December 2020, the EveryLife Foundation for Rare Diseases held a workshop to discuss these common challenges and solutions. Newborn screening officials described challenges including short staffing across the entire program, collection and transport of specimens, interrupted follow-up activities, and pilot study recruitment. To address these challenges, state programs implemented a wide variety of solutions to maintain the high standards of newborn screening. To address staffing issues, newborn screening programs, public health laboratories, and hospitals all cross-trained personnel, worked to manage staff stress, and established essential functions. Other solutions included working with courier companies to ensure the timely pick-up of specimen, creating educational materials for hospital staff, and the creation of hybrid recruitment models for pilot studies. Implementing the lessons discussed throughout this paper can help to prepare for the next public health emergencies to ensure that a program that interacts with millions of families every year and saves the lives of thousands of children every year is minimally impacted.

Keywords

• newborn screening
• COVID-19
• pilot studies
• follow-up services
• public health laboratories