Congratulations to the Recipients of the 2007 Advancements in MRSA Award
sponsored by Pfizer Inc

The Infectious Diseases Society of American (IDSA) and the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) have joined forces to offer the IDSA/SHEA Advancements in MRSA Awards.  Our goal is to support needed research, encourage innovation, and recognize advancements in MRSA prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.  The Advancments in MRSA Awards are sponsored by Pfizer Inc.

IDSA/SHEA Young Investigator Award in MRSA

The purpose of this award is to provide funding for outstanding clinical or epidemiological research on MRSA.  The total award amount is $200,000 given over a two-year period.  The recipient will receive unrestricted funds to support his or her salary, technicians, laboratory supplies, and equipment.

Clarence Buddy Creech II, MD, MPH

Clarence Buddy Creech II, MD, MPH, assistant professor of pediatric infectious diseases in the Pediatric Clinical Research Office at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, is the recipient of the 2007 IDSA/SHEA Advancements in MRSA Young Award sponsored by Pfizer Inc.  The purpose of the award is to provide funding for outstanding clinical or epidemiological research on MRSA.

Dr. Creech will receive financial support for his research proposal, MRSA Colonization in Women and Newborns.  The central hypothesis of his proposal is that nasal and vaginal CA-MRSA colonization are common among pregnant women, resulting in vertical transmission to the newborn and increased risk for MRSA diseases in the first months of life.  His research will address issues surrounding the increasingly common phenomenon of MRSA colonization in pregnant women and newborns, such as the source of colonization and methods of prevention.

Dr. Creech's interest in the clinical implications of MRSA began during his training.  After completing medical school at the University of Tennessee, Dr. Creech served as an intern, resident, and chief resident in pediatrics at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital.  He remained at Vanderbilt for a pediatric infectious diseases fellowship and received a masters degree in public health.  During his first year of fellowship, Dr. Creech designed a series of studies to evaluate the frequency of MRSA nasal colonization in young children.  His current research focuses on the clinical and molecular epidemiology of pediatric CA-MRSA, with a special emphasis on colonization and vaccine development.

IDSA/SHEA Special Innovation Awards in MRSA

The purpose of these awards is to help fund new, innovative projects designed to prevent, diagnose, or treat MRSA.  These awards will be given to help clinicians, hospital epidemiologists, or public health officials directly involved in combating MRSA at the institutional or community level.  These one-time, unrestricted awards are to be used to help "seed" new efforts, generate hypotheses, and promote outside-of-the-box thinking.  Potential projects include continuous quality improvement initiatives, health services research, educational efforts, surveillance projects, and other demonstration projects.

Michelle Barton-Forbes, MD

Michelle Barton-Forbes, MD, FIDSA, a fellow in the Division of Infectious Diseases at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada, is a recipient of a 2007 IDSA/SHEA Advancements in MRSA Special Innovations Award sponsored by Pfizer Inc.  The purpose of these awards is to help fund new, innovative projects designed to prevent, diagnose, or treat MRSA.  These awards are given to help clinicians, hospital epidemiologists, or public health officials directly involved in combating MRSA at the institutional or community level. 

Dr. Barton-Forbes’s proposal, Predicting the Threshold for Change in Empiric Medical Management of Shin and Soft Tissue Infections in the Era of Community-acquired MRSA, aims to set an appropriate threshold to identify at which point a change to MRSA-specific therapy for empiric treatment will offer the maximum clinical and public health gain.

Dr. Barton-Forbes, who completed her medical training at the University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica, where she practiced as a pediatrician before commencing her fellowship, is still affiliated with the University of the West Indies. She is pursuing a master’s degree in clinical epidemiology at the University of Toronto. Dr. Barton-Forbes’s current research interests include antimicrobial resistance, infections in the immunocompromised host, and vaccine-related diseases. For her success she acknowledges the invaluable experience and insight gained from working closely with the members of the Canadian CA-MRSA guidelines writing committee.

Cassandra Salgado, MD, MS

Cassandra Salgado, MD, MS, hospital epidemiologist and medical director for infection control at the Medical University of South Carolina Hospital and co-director of the hospital’s Epidemiology Laboratory, is one of the recipients of a 2007 IDSA/SHEA Advancements in MRSA Special Innovations Award sponsored by Pfizer Inc.  The purpose of these awards is to help fund new, innovative projects designed to prevent, diagnose, or treat MRSA.  These awards are given to help clinicians, hospital epidemiologists, or public health officials directly involved in combating MRSA at the institutional or community level. 

Dr. Salgado’s proposal, Providing Evidence of MRSA Clonal Spread to Healthcare Workers to Control Nosocomial Spread of the Organism, promises to help “seed” a new effort to educate healthcare workers (HCW) regarding the transmission of MRSA in order to increase compliance with infection control measures and decrease nosocomial acquisition of MRSA.  To address the poor compliance of the majority of U.S. healthcare facilities to the CDC recommended hand hygiene (HH) and contact precautions (CP), Dr. Salgado’s project aims to institute an effective educational campaign to increase infection control compliance at her institution with an HH campaign and a program of active surveillance to identify colonized or infected patients.  The study will provide HCW with a new unit/ward-specific MRSA monthly report that shows visual evidence of clone spread of MRSA, on compliance with HH and CP and nosocomial acquisition of the MRSA.

Dr. Salgado serves on numerous hospital committees related to infection control, quality of care, and patient safety issues. She completed medical school, her internal medicine and pediatrics residency, and her chief residency at West Virginia University School of Medicine.  She completed her infectious diseases fellowship and earned her masters of science degree in health evaluation sciences and epidemiology from the University of Virginia.  Dr. Salgado’s primary research focuses on the investigation of outbreaks, prevention of hospital-acquired infections, and the prevention and control of antibiotic resistance.  

IDSA/SHEA Special Recognition Award in MRSA

The purpose of the award is to recognize recent outstanding clinical or epidemiological research that can be expted to make an important contribution toward preventing, diagnosing, or treating MRSA.

Vance G. Fowler, Jr., MD

Vance G. Fowler, Jr., MD, associate professor at Duke University in the division of infectious diseases, is the recipient of the 2007 IDSA/SHEA Advancements in MRSA Special Recognition Award sponsored by Pfizer Inc.  The purpose of the award is to recognize outstanding clinical or epidemiological research that can be expected to make an important contribution toward preventing, diagnosing, or treating MRSA.

Dr. Fowler is being honored for his dedication over the last 10 years and his preeminence in studying Staphylococcus aureus and MRSA.  Among his numerous contributions to the study of MRSA, several stand out as extraordinary and revolutionary in understanding S. aureus.  Among them is the leadership role he assumed in establishing the Duke registry of S. aureus bacteremia patients.  In addition, he was the lead author on a key study addressing the characteristics of complicated (vs. uncomplicated) S. aureus bacteremia as well as on a paper evaluating a new antibiotic treatment for MRSA.

Prior to his current research career at Duke University, Dr. Fowler graduated cum laude from Duke and attended medical school at the University of North Carolina.  After spending a year as a Rotary Scholar studying malaria in the highland rainforests of Tanzania, he returned to Duke and completed an internal medicine residency, fellowships in infectious diseases and health services research, a masters in health science in clinical research, and a diplomate in clinical tropical medicine.  For over a decade his research has focused upon the question, “Why do some patients with Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia do well, while others do poorly?” and is currently funded by the National  Institutes of Health for these investigations.  To pursue this question, Dr. Fowler created the Staphylococcus aureus Bacteremia Group (SABG) and co-founded the International Collaboration on Endocarditis (ICE).