Denise Cardo, MD, CDC, Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion
Denise Cardo and her public health colleagues protect our health everyday through their research, in ways we sometimes cannot see. "Sometimes we take public health for granted and only when it's not there or if fails do we see the importance of it. Public health and public health research is not a one time investment - we continue to have new procedures in health care, new threats to identify and prevent, and new bugs that become resistant to drugs."
Denise Cardo, MD, works to decrease hospital-based infections in patients. Her work is improving lives nationwide and protecting us every time we enter a hospital or have an operation. Hospitals are adopting goals and implementing evidence-based guidelines to reduce hospital-based infections such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in patients. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's national surveillance system shows a 50% decrease in MRSA bloodstream infections. CDC and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality have both seen even greater reductions in other hospital-based infections and are now working together to better understand how to make national level impact. This research will continue to reduce health threats for us.
"We've come a long way," Cardo said. "People didn't talk about this being a preventable issue in the past. It makes me proud to see health care quality issues being seen as public health issues, and being seen overall by consumers and society as preventable infections. Working with partners, including consumer groups and professional organizations, makes a difference. We're now seeing major commitment to preventing these infections, and therefore, large decreases in hospital-based infections. Patients are also better informed and expect certain steps to be taken at the hospital.
"Public health research has given us recommendations on the safest way to perform or diagnose and treat diseases. It has given us important information, from the types of antiseptics you're supposed to use on a patient, to how to insert and remove catheters, keep the environment clean and what to do in case of complications. These are all evidence-based and that is the importance of research."
Cardo says that while the health gains are inspiring, we still have a long way to go.
"There are still many gaps emerging in health care we are concerned about. These are ongoing prevention efforts - we must look at public health as action-oriented and remind people over and over that we need to be prepared to better protect people. The National Institutes of Health may identify a new bug with their basic research. AHRQ may do the health services research. We need a link between the two -- CDC identifies the problem by doing outbreak investigations, epidemiological studies and more applied research, as well as strategies to prevent infections. We identify gaps in knowledge and where we need to be doing more.
"This is what is so interesting about public health -- it is so dynamic and you can make a difference. You see the impact of your work, in numbers of infections going down, in posters with recommendations in the hospitals, in people sharing their stories of hospitals doing a great job managing their complications. Much more needs to be done, but it is motivating to know that we have and can do more to improve health and can do it faster and better with public health research."