{"456511":{"#nid":"456511","#data":{"type":"news","title":"CDC Awards $2.2 Million to Prevent Spread of Infectious Diseases in Health Care Facilities","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EEmory University School of Medicine has been awarded a three-year, $2.2 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), making Emory a new member of its Prevention Epicenters Program. The program, which began in 1997, focuses on infection control and prevention research in health care facilities. Emory will collaborate with the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) and Georgia State University on the grant, creating the Prevention Epicenter of Emory and Atlanta Consortium Hospitals or PEACH.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EEmory and five other U.S. academic medical centers join five existing centers to accelerate health care innovations by discovering new methods to protect patients and health care workers from highly infectious diseases. The new centers will focus on the prevention of Ebola and more common infections that are transmitted like Ebola.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThe goal of PEACH is to translate microbiological, epidemiological and technological discoveries into new strategies to better protect the health and safety of physicians, nurses and patients from high-risk pathogens and communicable diseases,\u201d said Jesse T. Jacob, MD, associate professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine, and lead principal investigator (PI) of this grant. \u201cTheir work will include rapid prototyping in simulation labs, quantifying and visualizing spatial metrics using special analytic tools, and using novel technology to implement programs to enhance hand hygiene compliance.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EPEACH investigators will focus on three projects:\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cul\u003E\u003Cli\u003EEmory investigators will work with Georgia State microbiologists to assess the transfer of a marker for Ebola and other pathogens when removing personal protective equipment (PPE) and look at steps in the process where errors could occur. The group will visit Georgia\u2019s five state-designated Ebola treatment centers and work with healthcare workers at those sites to assess opportunities to improve safety for healthcare workers. The Georgia State PI is Lisa Casanova, PhD. Emory leads are Colleen Kraft, MD; Susan Ray, MD; and Andi Shane, MD.\u003C\/li\u003E\u003Cli\u003EEmory and Georgia Tech researchers will study how the physical environment can make it safer for healthcare workers to don (put on) and doff (take off) PPE required for working with patients infected by Ebola virus disease and other pathogens with transmission mechanisms similar to Ebola. They will use realistic simulations to understand how health care workers use PPE at the SimTigrate Design Lab in Georgia Tech\u2019s College of Architecture. Also, Georgia Tech\u2019s human factors group from the School of Psychology will focus on behavioral interactions with PPE to identify high-risk components of the suits or of the process used to don or doff them. Georgia Tech PIs are Craig Zimring, PhD, and Frank Durso, PhD. Jacob is the Emory lead.\u003C\/li\u003E\u003Cli\u003EEmory researchers will install a new electronic hand hygiene monitoring system at two of its hospitals to look at ways to improve hand hygiene, long considered the cornerstone of preventing infections in hospitalized patients. The system will be used to compare the effectiveness of different methods of providing feedback to health care workers on hand hygiene compliance. Emory PIs are James P. Steinberg, MD, and Bonnie Jennings, PhD, RN. John Boyce, MD, an internationally renowned expert on hand hygiene, who recently retired from Yale University, will serve as a consultant.\u003C\/li\u003E\u003C\/ul\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe know that hospital-acquired infections are a serious public health problem for patients in the hospital but healthcare professionals are also at risk for getting infections while doing their jobs,\u201d said Casanova, an assistant professor of Environmental Health at Georgia State University. \u201cOur research is focused on a crucial need in public health preparedness \u2013 the need to protect our health care workforce from occupational infection.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EZimring, a professor in the College of Architecture at Georgia Tech, said, \u201cPutting on protective equipment requires a minimum of 21 steps, depending on the type of equipment, while also using the \u2018buddy system.\u2019 Mistakes due to poorly organized physical settings and processes can lead to transmission of deadly diseases to the environment, health care workers or patients. In a project to be co-led by Megan Denham, a research associate in SimTigrate, we hope to better define the design of space needed for safely donning and doffing PPE in our full-scale simulation lab.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAs with much of today\u2019s technology, proper use depends on human factors. \u201cMistakes made by health care providers when working with protective suits result not only from the person and technology, but also from the environment, organization, and culture in which the providers operate,\u201d Durso said. \u201cWe\u2019ll be looking at behavioral interactions with protective equipment to identify the high-risk components of the suit or of the processes used to doff (or don) the suit.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ECDC has tasked the Prevention Epicenters members with developing cutting-edge science that is needed to stay ahead of the germs, for both the patients and health care providers.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cTo help protect Americans from infections spread in hospitals, CDC supports the Prevention Epicenter program to look for better ways to stop these preventable infections,\u201d said CDC Director Tom Frieden, MD, MPH. \u201cEmory will play an important role in discovering how we can make hospitals and health care facilities even safer.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBesides Emory, the five other newly added academic medical centers that will identify infectious disease-related innovations from 2015 to 2018 are:\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cul\u003E\u003Cli\u003EThe Johns Hopkins University\u003C\/li\u003E\u003Cli\u003EUniversity of Illinois, Chicago\u003C\/li\u003E\u003Cli\u003EUniversity of Iowa\u003C\/li\u003E\u003Cli\u003EUniversity of Maryland, Baltimore\u003C\/li\u003E\u003Cli\u003EUniversity of Utah\u003C\/li\u003E\u003C\/ul\u003E\u003Cp\u003ECDC\u2019s existing Prevention Epicenters are at the following institutions: Cook County Health \u0026amp; Hospital System and Rush University; Duke University; Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and University of California, Irvine; University of Pennsylvania and Washington University.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EMedia Relations Contacts\u003C\/strong\u003E: Georgia Tech \u2013 John Toon (\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jtoon@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Ejtoon@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E) (404-894-6986); Emory University \u2013 Janet Christenbury (\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jmchris@emory.edu\u0022\u003Ejmchris@emory.edu\u003C\/a\u003E) (404-727-8599).\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EEmory University School of Medicine has been awarded a three-year, $2.2 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), making Emory a new member of its Prevention Epicenters Program. Emory will collaborate with the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) and Georgia State University on the grant, creating the Prevention Epicenter of Emory and Atlanta Consortium Hospitals or PEACH.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Using a $2.2 million grant, researchers will study how to better prevent the spread of infectious diseases such as Ebola"}],"uid":"27303","created_gmt":"2015-10-06 15:42:30","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:19:43","author":"John Toon","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2015-10-06T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2015-10-06T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"456481":{"id":"456481","type":"image","title":"Protecting health care workers","body":null,"created":"1449256334","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 19:12:14","changed":"1475895199","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:53:19","alt":"Protecting health care workers","file":{"fid":"203488","name":"m112001-14jk0263_final01.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/m112001-14jk0263_final01_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/m112001-14jk0263_final01_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":1744512,"path_740":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/m112001-14jk0263_final01_0.jpg?itok=aOC-4mYp"}},"456491":{"id":"456491","type":"image","title":"Studying facilities and human factors issues","body":null,"created":"1449256334","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 19:12:14","changed":"1475895199","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:53:19","alt":"Studying facilities and human factors issues","file":{"fid":"203489","name":"cdc-epicenter-lg.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/cdc-epicenter-lg_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/cdc-epicenter-lg_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":2320575,"path_740":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/cdc-epicenter-lg_0.jpg?itok=qXYbBLLv"}}},"media_ids":["456481","456491"],"groups":[{"id":"1188","name":"Research Horizons"}],"categories":[{"id":"146","name":"Life Sciences and Biology"},{"id":"135","name":"Research"}],"keywords":[{"id":"123","name":"CDC"},{"id":"144051","name":"CDC Epicenter"},{"id":"13022","name":"Ebola"},{"id":"2493","name":"health care"},{"id":"7142","name":"human factors"},{"id":"3334","name":"infectious disease"},{"id":"167737","name":"SimTigrate"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39441","name":"Bioengineering and Bioscience"},{"id":"39501","name":"People and Technology"}],"news_room_topics":[{"id":"71891","name":"Health and Medicine"}],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EJohn Toon\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EResearch News\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jtoon@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Ejtoon@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E(404) 894-6986\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["jtoon@gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}