The Grant Project Continues On Into Year Five 

In Year One and Two of this grant, laboratories increased their biosafety by updating and equipping their departments to a Level A Sentinel Laboratory as described in the Laboratory Response Network Protocol.  In Year Three and Four, the focus of this grant shifted to concentrate more on education, training opportunities, and small equipment enhancement.  Year Five will maintain that focus by funding the education and training of our laboratorians across the state and assist them to maintain their Level A Sentinel Laboratory status. In addition to this Year Five will also help laboratories to prepare for pandemic outbreaks.

 Grant materials were mailed out to laboratories that met the minimum qualifications necessary to submit an application.  The following links make the grant materials for Year Five available for download for laboratories who wish to complete this process on-line:

Year Five Laboratory Capacity Building Grant Announcement Letter

Year Five Laboratory Capacity Building Grant Guidance

Year Five Laboratory Capacity Building Grant Application 

Background

The Bioterrorism Response Laboratory Program considers the community laboratories across the state of Wyoming as critical to the state’s ability to respond to either naturally occurring disease or event driven occurrences of agents of bioterrorism.  We saw a need to provide funding to assist eligible Wyoming state community clinical laboratories to improve capacity for and response to naturally occurring or event driven infectious disease occurrences caused by microorganisms considered to be associated with bioterrorism.  In response to this need the Bioterrorism Community Laboratory Capacity Building Grants Project (BTCLCB) was developed in 2004.

Project Success

The BT Laboratory Program Community Grants Project has been a great success. Laboratories were funded based on the specifics of their request, with the upper limit being $20,000 for a single award.  The CDC Bioterrorism Preparedness Grant and the Health Resources and Services Administration Grant (HRSA) underwrote the funding of over $465,000 in grants for capacity and capability enhancements in 30 community laboratories from 22 counties throughout the state.  The great majority of participating laboratories utilized the funds provided through the grant project to build capacity in the grant goal areas of safety for laboratories and personnel (60%), laboratory staff training and education (87%), and laboratory equipment enhancement (83%) or communication and information technology resources (60%). 

Top award for Year 3 was $10,000, with the top award for Year 4 being $8,900.00 This project continues to be sucessful in to 2008, the fifth year of this Grant Project, with top award anticipated at $6,300.00.

Funding for Year 5 is underwritten by the 2007-2008 CDC Bioterrorism Preparedness and the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Cooperative Agreements.

Project Purpose

The purpose of the BTCLCB Grant Project was to enable laboratories in the state of Wyoming to build capacity and capability necessary to safely recognize, identify and respond to a natural disease outbreak or an unannounced bioterrorism event by providing the funding to build laboratory capacity in the following areas:

• Safety for laboratories and personnel. A primary goal was to ensure that every laboratory in the state that performed bacterial cultures on the types of specimen sources that could contain agents of bioterrorism be equipped with a Class II Biological Safety Cabinet. 
• Laboratory staff training and education.  A primary goal of the project was that all laboratorians who may package and ship infectious substances be adequately trained.
• Laboratory instrumentation equipment & communication and information technologies enhancements.  A primary goal of this project was to ensure that each and every laboratory in the state has the capability to receive and transmit critical information using email, web-based information technology, and facsimile. A primary goal was that laboratories are able to safely perform basic microbiological procedure using up to date instrumentation and equipment.