The situation of the Greenwich Department of Health Laboratory in the second decade of the twenty-first century is a development of public health activities from every phase of its existence. The Sanitary Awakening of the 19th century discovered the connection between contaminated water and disease; today one of the laboratory’s major functions is the testing of private and public drinking water wells for coliform bacteria contamination. The Bacteriological Revolution demonstrated that many diseases are caused by bacteria, providing a rational basis for their diagnosis and treatment. Today the laboratory performs the Gram stains and media cultures developed in the days of Robert Koch. The influenza pandemic haunted Connecticut in 1918; today the laboratory participates in emergency preparedness procedures that can help respond to a deliberately introduced epidemic. Infectious diseases became well controlled and chronic conditions became more prominent as the century progressed; the laboratory today offers lipid profile testing as part of Metabolic Syndrome screening, and testing is provided to children as part of the Family Health Division’s Well Child clinics for medically underserved families. A great burst of work was done in the fields of air pollution and water pollution during the beginnings of environmental consciousness in the 1970s; the lab continues this in the regular monitoring of the Mianus Pond and the Byram River for bacteria, nutrients and heavy metal pollution. The laboratory continues to structure its work around the core functions, essential services, and objectives developed in the 1980s and 1990s; it tests for emerging pathogens such as Lyme disease and babesiosis using the methods of molecular biology, and it deals with indoor air quality issues such as radon and mold as well. Finally, the laboratory has established procedures to deal with the challenges of terrorism in the 21st century.
A laboratory director during any phase of the Greenwich Department of Health Laboratory’s existence could not have predicted what the next set of public health challenges would be. But the fact that the Town had a laboratory in place, that the Department of Health understood how to deploy it, and that the community at large made use of it, allowed it to remain a valuable resource for the Town in responding to new public health issues.
At the end of 2011, the Town of Greenwich received a grant from the state’s Small Town Assistance Program (STEAP) for the purpose of renovating and improving the laboratory space (Gov. Malloy, 2011). This will provide a suitable setting for the next chapter in the story of what Dr. Hiscock might have referred to as a “well-rounded laboratory,” now, unquestionably, an essential part of Dr. Klein’s vision of a “modern health department”.