County of Santa Clara Public Health Department

The County of Santa Clara Public Health Department is a public health agency that serves two million residents. The County organized the first coalition in the state of California to analyze COVID in wastewater to inform local government health decision-making. This was a coalition of 4 wastewater agencies and academic partners. This allowed experts and leaders to understand how COVID was spreading during the early days of the pandemic when little was known of the virus. Now, this type of analysis has expanded to understand other diseases like flu, norovirus, and RSV, and moved in-house, with the analysis done at the Public Health Laboratory.

To bring the science of wastewater monitoring to a broad audience the county designed a fun and surprising campaign: Poop Don’t Lie. The campaign made wastewater data accessible to interested community members.