During the course of the twentieth century, public health has added twenty-five years to the human lifespan. Laboratories have always been a part of public health as it has grown and developed. The Greenwich Department of Health Laboratory has been a part of this whole story, and is ready to write the next chapter. This is its outline.
Back in the nineteenth century, people became aware of the importance of having a water supply uncontaminated by sewage. This movement is called the Sanitary Awakening. In 1900, Leander Jones, the Greenwich Health Officer, was sending samples of potable water to the state laboratory for analysis. Today, the Greenwich Department of Health Laboratory tests over 1000 samples of drinking water per year for bacterial and chemical contamination.
Dr. Albert Bennett was the first laboratory director of the Greenwich Department of Health Laboratory when it was founded in 1914. He would frequently waive his fees for persons who were unable to pay him. In the days when all health care was fee-for-service, this probably meant the difference between getting medical care and going it alone for many people. Today, the Greenwich Department of Health Laboratory follows in his footsteps by providing free blood testing services to the medically underserved population served by our well child clinics.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the bacteriological research of Pasteur and Koch demonstrated that infectious diseases have specific causes that can be identified and treated, causing a true revolution in medicine. Dr. Louise Larrimore, one of the few woman physicians in the United States in the 1920s, performed the public health work for the Town of Greenwich from her laboratory in Greenwich Hospital
During the Roaring Twenties, Professor Ira Hiscock of Yale wrote an extensive evaluation of the Greenwich Department of Health, including its laboratory. He gave high marks to the department as a whole, commending its control of the milk and food supply, and the "unusual enterprise" of the nursing service. He said that it was unusual in Connecticut for a town the size of Greenwich
At the outbreak of World War II, the Health Director of Greenwich
Frank R. Bozza, who ran the laboratory during the two decades after the war, commented on the role of antibiotics and vaccines in the control of infectious diseases. The Greenwich Department of Health had sponsored a number of vaccination programs over the years. For example, they participated in the field trials of the Salk polio vaccine in the 1950s. This affects the work of the Greenwich Department of Health Laboratory in that its clinical work today is now focused on the prevention of chronic conditions rather than infectious diseases.
The publication of Rachel Carson’s book "The Silent Spring" in 1962 sparked the beginning of the environmental movement, and incidentally prompted Greenwich
The 1980s and 90s were a time of conceptual change in public health, focusing on assessing the community for health issues, developing programs and policies to address these issues, and assuring that needs were being met by the use of data-based goals. Dr. James Lieberman, the Health Director during these years, was instrumental in leading this change. Today the Greenwich Department of Health Laboratory looks to the Ten Essential Services of Public Health to guide its work, such as informing and empowering people to take action to benefit their health, or monitoring the health status of the community. An example of this was in the 1990s, when Health Director Caroline Calderone Baisley ordered the testing of all the children in Greenwich day care centers for elevated levels of lead in their blood.
The public health challenges of the twenty-first century include emerging infectious diseases and the response to terrorism. The Greenwich Department of Health Laboratory, under the leadership of its director Doug Serafin, has developed a program to test deer ticks for the organisms that cause Lyme Disease and Babesiosis. It is a member of the Laboratory Response Network, which was organized to deal with biological and chemical terrorism, and it participates in training and drills in order to be able to respond to the threat of biological terrorist acts.
This year (2012), the Greenwich Department of Health Laboratory has been the beneficiary of a recent state grant to the town, which is being used to renovate the laboratory. Part of this renovation will include arrangements that will allow the safe handling of potential agents of bioterrorosm. This new space will allow the lab to more effectively provide its services to the community, which include testing potable, recreational and environmental waters for a wide range of contaminants, cholesterol and blood lead testing, testing ticks for Lyme disease, testing homes for radon, and serving as a public health education service for the entire town.