Contagion Editorial Staff

A former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) deputy commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, MD, was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 57-42 to be the next commissioner of the FDA.

Lilian Abbo, MD, chief, infection prevention & control and antibiotic stewardship, Jackson Health System, associate professor of clinical medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, discusses some of the limitations of rapid diagnostic testing.

Lauri A. Hicks, DO, Director, Office of Antibiotic Stewardship, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, discusses what we still don’t know about antibiotics.

Nicola Thompson, PhD, Epidemiologist, Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), explains that, in order to decrease the national prevalence of HAIs in the United States, we can’t just focus on acute care settings.

Gonzalo Bearman, MD, MPH, professor of medicine, and hospital epidemiologist, Department of Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases, Virginia Commonwealth University, discusses some alternative approaches to contact precautions for patients with Clostridium difficile.

Matt Linam, MD, MS, Assistant Professor, Pediatric Infectious Diseases, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, stresses the importance of healthcare workers staying home when they’re ill.

Gonzalo Bearman, MD, MPH, professor of medicine, and hospital epidemiologist, Department of Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases, Virginia Commonwealth University, explains how contact precautions can affect a patient’s wellbeing and quality of care.

Lauri A. Hicks, DO, Director, Office of Antibiotic Stewardship, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, explains the importance of identifying gaps in antibiotic stewardship.

Gonzalo Bearman, MD, MPH, professor of medicine, and hospital epidemiologist, Department of Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases, Virginia Commonwealth University, discusses contact precautions for patients with Clostridium difficile.

Jean-Paul Gonzalez, MD, PhD, Deputy Director, Center of Excellence for Emerging and Zoonotic Animal Diseases (CEEZAD), Kansas State University, Adjunct Professor, Kansas State University, discusses the parallels between past Ebola outbreaks, and how they can help us manage the current Zika pandemic.

Lilian Abbo, MD, chief, infection prevention & control and antibiotic stewardship, Jackson Health System, associate professor of clinical medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, explains why diagnostic tests may yield false positives.

Robert Malone, MD, MS, CEO/CSO of Atheric Pharmaceuticals, LLC, discusses the benefits of repurposing drugs for emerging infectious diseases rather than going down the very long, costly road of developing new ones.

Nicola Thompson, PhD, Epidemiologist, Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), discusses the next step in implementing a prevalence survey to estimate national burden of HAIs in US nursing homes.

In case you missed them, here are our top 5 articles for the week of April 23, 2017.

Lauri A. Hicks, Director, Office of Antibiotic Stewardship, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, discusses how more data is needed to provide dentists with better guidelines for prescribing antibiotics.

Emily Heil, PharmD, BCPS-AQ ID, assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, explains why stewards should think outside of the box when coming up with interventions to include in an antimicrobial stewardship program.

Do some healthcare-associated infections receive more attention at your institution than others? Has your institution committed to using single-use medical devices to stave off infections? The editorial staff at Contagion® wants your feedback. Please take this brief survey to weigh-in.

Madeline King, PharmD, assistant professor of Clinical Pharmacy at the University of the Sciences, Philadelphia College of Pharmacy in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, explains how her future research aims to understand the effects of ceftazidime-avibactam in different patient populations.

Matt Linam, MD, MS, Assistant Professor, Pediatric Infectious Diseases, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, explains the impact of respiratory viral infections in children.

Lauri A. Hicks, DO, Director, Office of Antibiotic Stewardship, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, discusses the potential consequences of prescribing unneeded antibiotics.

Contagion® recently spoke with Carissa Holmes, MPH, CDC, who discussed how policy change can work to strengthen infection prevention practices.

Belinda Ostrowsky, MD, MPH, Health Systems Director of Epidemiology, Antimicrobial Stewardship & Infection Prevention, Montefiore Medical Center, and Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, discusses five stewardship strategies to help reduce healthcare-associated Clostridium difficile rates.

In case you missed them, here are our top 5 articles for the week of April 16, 2017.

Emily Heil, PharmD, BCPS-AQ ID, assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, shares an effective stewardship intervention for ruling out if someone is allergic to penicillin.

Annelies Wilder-Smith, MD, PhD, professor at Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine in Singapore, discusses the strain of Zika that hit Singapore in 2016.

Topline results of a recent phase 3 clinical trial have shown that iclaprim is as effective as vancomycin for the treatment of acute bacterial skin and skin structure infections (ABSSSIs).

Silvia Munoz-Price, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at the Institute for Health and Society, Medical College of Wisconsin, and Enterprise Epidemiologist for Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin, discusses some issues that she believes the subspecialty needs to address.

Matt Linam, MD, MS, Assistant Professor, Pediatric Infectious Diseases, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, explains a strategy used at his healthcare facility to prevent respiratory viral HAIs in children.

Lauri A. Hicks, DO, Director, Office of Antibiotic Stewardship, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, discusses what we know about antibiotic prescribing habits among dentists.

In case you missed them, here are our top 5 articles for the week of April 9, 2017.