(Chicago, IL, Friday, September 2, 2022) – Pathologists and laboratory medicine are essential to outbreak response, including emerging threats like monkeypox and remerging diseases like polio. In the past two years, these experts have performed over 1 billion COVID-19 diagnostic tests and diagnosed many of the over 92.7 million cases in the United States.

Pathologists and laboratory medicine professionals play a critical role in everyday healthcare, diagnosing nearly 2 million cases of cancer and tens of millions of cases of other serious diseases in the United States each year.

Despite their importance, pathologists and laboratory medicine professionals are in critically short supply and are often overlooked and undervalued in healthcare.

The American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP) and its members, which represent more than 100,000 pathologists and laboratory medicine professionals, are creating new training and outreach initiatives to draw young people to the profession and strengthen the relationship between the lab and clinicians, patients and families to improve care.

ASCP is calling policymakers, payers and health systems leaders to join its efforts and step up to support the profession and safeguard public health.

The American Society for Clinical Pathology unites more than 100,000 anatomic and clinical pathologists, medical laboratory professionals, residents and students to accelerate the advancement of laboratory medicine to better improve patient care through knowledge, collaboration, and global community. Visit https://www.ascp.org/content/home.