Infectious Diseases faculty selected to receive Department of Medicine FAME Grant

Since 2008, the Department of Medicine has offered the Fostering the Academic Mission in the Emory Department of Medicine (FAME) Grant to provide clinical faculty with support to dedicate up to 20 percent of their professional time to scholarly activity including research, education, quality improvement (QI) projects, and mentoring.

Zanthia Wiley, MD, assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases, has been selected as one of the 2018 FAME Grant recipients. She hopes to make a difference in antimicrobial stewardship by expending her efforts toward quality improvement research. Wiley’s FAME Grant project, “A multidisciplinary diagnostic stewardship initiative to optimize antibiotics for pneumonia,” aims to improve appropriate prescribing of antibiotics for pneumonia by increasing both respiratory culture orders and collection.

“I was thrilled to be chosen as a FAME Grant recipient but even more excited that this grant will allow collaboration with several disciplines, including nursing, respiratory therapy, critical care, and hospital medicine,” Wiley says. “The FAME Grant has been a wonderful opportunity and has really sparked my interest in pursuing future antimicrobial stewardship research endeavors.”

Federico Palacio, MD, assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases, received the 2017 FAME Grant. His project was titled “Reducing hospital readmission rates from Outpatient Parenteral Antimicrobial Therapy (OPAT) clinic through the implementation of an OPAT checklist.”

“Receiving the FAME Grant was a valuable learning opportunity for me. It provided me the protected time and guidance to develop a project during my clinical practice,” says Palacio. “As a result of the FAME Grant, I successfully developed the OPAT checklist that we are actively using in our OPAT clinic to improve patient outcomes and will be the foundation for further research projects. Additionally, the grant helped me foster collaboration among faculty members in the Department of Medicine and strengthened my ability as a clinical researcher, which is critical to my career development in the department and at Emory.”

For more information on the FAME Grant, visit http://bit.ly/FAME-Grant.