The Molecular Epidemiology program at the Washington State Department of Health (WA DOH) developed a comprehensive assessment tool with the goal of understanding the status of pathogen genomics data generation and data use. The tool focuses on four main areas: 1) how teams have historically generated and used sequence data, by program area and by pathogen, 2) teams’ existing genomic epidemiology capacity and their training and education needs, 3) bottlenecks and limitations impacting teams’ ability to use pathogen genomic data, and 4) teams’ goals for future use of sequencing data. There are four components to the tool: a questionnaire to guide the long form interviews, a template profile to organize the information collected through the interviews, two scales that facilitate standardized scoring, and a worksheet to facilitate data organization and analysis. The data analysis component facilitates identification of overarching themes across teams, categorization of teams’ current state of sequencing data-use, as well as highlighting gaps and opportunities.
The tool was developed and deployed at WA DOH. It was also piloted at Public Health Seattle and King County (PHSKC). Version 3.0 has updates based on suggestions made by PHSKC.
The toolkit is intended for use by teams or agencies seeking to assess their agency’s current capacity in pathogen genomics.