Emory 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 Georgia Tech and Georgia State University on the grant, creating the Prevention Epicenter of Emory and Atlanta Consortium Hospitals or PEACH.
Emory 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.
“The 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,” says Jesse T. Jacob, MD, associate professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and lead principal investigator (PI) of this grant. “Their 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.” Read more
