When it comes to monitoring diseases that affect public heath, Wisconsin is one of four National Centers of Excellence, a CDC designation that puts the state at the forefront of efforts to improve and expand wastewater’s role in monitoring public health. Professor Sandra McLellan and her lab have played a lead role in achieving this designation with their groundbreaking research to monitor COVID-19 beginning in 2020. The UWM School of Freshwater Sciences partners with UW-Madison scientists at the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene and epidemiologists and public health experts at the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel highlighted their work and what comes next in wastewater disease monitoring on Aug. 14, 2023, in the story Everybody poops. Wisconsin is a national leader in using it to monitor public health.