PHILADELPHIA – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) gave the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics (CCEB) at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine $2 million over the next five years to fund research to find new ways to reduce infections in health care settings.
The CDC Prevention Epicenter program chose CCEB as one of five academic medical centers nationwide to receive the funding. This is the first year that the CCEB is included in the funding. The Penn Medicine center, led by Ebbing Lautenbach, MD, MPH, MSCE, associate professor of medicine, Infectious Diseases Division, and associate professor of Epidemiology, will focus on the use of biomarkers, such as C-reactive protein, to improve antibiotic use in intensive care unit settings.
The CDC estimates that 1 out of 20 hospitalized patients will obtain an infection during the process of receiving care for other health conditions. The CDC is distributing a total of $10 million across the five centers to combat those numbers.
“Although this program has been in existence for over 10 years, this award represents the first time that Penn will be one of the five epicenter sites across the US,” said Lautenbach. “This represents a great opportunity for us to perform not only the work proposed at the Penn site, but also to help lead a larger collaborative effort to advance the science focusing on healthcare-acquired infections.”
For more information on the 2011 CDC Epicenter awards, please read the CDC news release.
Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System’s patient care facilities stretch from the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania to the New Jersey shore. These include the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chester County Hospital, Lancaster General Health, Penn Medicine Princeton Health, and Pennsylvania Hospital—the nation’s first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional facilities and enterprises include Good Shepherd Penn Partners, Penn Medicine at Home, Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital, and Princeton House Behavioral Health, among others.
Penn Medicine is an $11.1 billion enterprise powered by more than 49,000 talented faculty and staff.