The government authority in West Chester, Pennsylvania seeks a vendor to enhance laboratory and surveillance capacity services. The selected contractor will be responsible for improving laboratory workforce capabilities, specifically addressing laboratory safety, accessioning, testing, and reporting. The scope also includes building expertise to support healthcare and community outbreak response, community resilience, and infection prevention and control.

Key tasks involve training and hiring staff to strengthen the epidemiology and informatics workforce, enhancing infrastructure for response to respiratory and other public health conditions, and supporting emergency operations management related to respiratory illnesses. The vendor will need to increase the organization’s capacity for timely data management and reporting, establish or enhance community-based surveillance (with a focus on vulnerable populations and high-risk exposures), and monitor daily incidence rates at detailed geographic levels to inform mitigation strategies.

Additional responsibilities include developing efficient systems for specimen submission to laboratories, rapidly scaling testing to meet demand during surges, assessing and monitoring infections among healthcare personnel, and monitoring cases and exposures to implement effective targeted mitigation in high-risk healthcare facilities. The anticipated contract period is three years.