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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has linked with clinical partners in new "Prevention Epicenter" projects designed to find novel strategies for detection and prevention of post-surgical adverse events, bloodstream infections, Clostridium difficile infections, infections caused by antimicrobial-resistant organisms, and inappropriate antimicrobial use.

CDC puts $10 million into infection research

January 2, 2015

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CDC puts $10 million into infection research

CDC epicenters study C. diff, BSIs, drug resistance

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has linked with clinical partners in new "Prevention Epicenter" projects designed to find novel strategies for detection and prevention of post-surgical adverse events, bloodstream infections, Clostridium difficile infections, infections caused by antimicrobial-resistant organisms, and inappropriate antimicrobial use.

Five academic centers will receive a total of $10 million in research grants from the CDC. The CDC established its "Prevention Epicenter Program" in 1997 as a way for the agency to work directly with medical academic partners and address issues like prevention of health care-associated infections and antibiotic resistance.

The CDC names new Prevention Epicenters every five years based on peer-reviewed grant applications and then works collaboratively with the Prevention Epicenter's principal investigators on joint research projects. The CDC recently completed competitive renewal of the program, and the new Prevention Epicenters began their work in February.

The current network consists of five academic partners. Each partner is affiliated with multiple health care facilities having common informatics infrastructures well suited to support health care quality research. Recent and ongoing Prevention Epicenter research studies and demonstration projects include:

  • Collaboration among centers to implement and evaluate strategies to reduce transmission of antimicrobial-resistant organisms among patients in intensive care units using novel approaches to routine skin antisepsis.
  • A multicenter study of a novel approach to using administrative and pharmacy data to make surveillance for surgical site infections simpler and more accurate. The novel approach can decrease the labor required for the surveillance and yet substantially increase sensitivity of detection.
  • A multicenter intervention using post- prescription review as a method of promoting rational antimicrobial use. The results suggest that unjustified broad-spectrum antimicrobial use is common, and that post-prescription review can enhance appropriate antimicrobial use in hospitals.
  • A multicenter study to determine baseline incidence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant enterococcus (VRE) transmission in 12 intensive care units (ICUs) in five hospitals. The study demonstrated that active surveillance cultures increase detection of MRSA and VRE colonization in ICUs by up to 49%.