As the Lead PGCoE for Education, the NE PGCoE aims to prepare the state and local public health workforce for pathogen genomic surveillance and genomics-informed outbreak response. Our educational efforts are aimed at supporting the infectious disease work of public health staff including laboratorians, bioinformaticians, and epidemiologists—and also at providing world-class educational materials to individuals who support the advancement of public health genomics, such as public health laboratory directors, public health IT professionals, and public health leadership.

Through a modular and self-paced curriculum with multiple pathways, the PGCoE Lead Education program will provide a robust collection of asynchronous courses hosted on a country-wide platform. The carefully designed courses are the product of a collaboration between the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Harvard Medical School, The Broad Institute (lab of Pardis Sabeti), and the Massachusetts Consortium for Pandemic Readiness, and collectively will support the expansion of pathogen genomics into routine public health practice to respond to current and future infectious threats. We are also committed to leveraging the expertise of the entire PGCoE network to achieve our goals, and we work closely with representatives from all PGCoE sites and other external experts to generate and frame the curriculum.

A first set of foundational courses in genomic epidemiology is anticipated to launch in 2025, and a link to our educational platform will be shared here when available.

The NE PGCoE is actively engaged in educational and workforce development opportunities beyond the Lead PGCoE for Education program. These efforts, largely spearheaded by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, include providing regular bioinformatics training opportunities and community events as the CDC OAMD Bioinformatics Regional Resource for the Northeast.