2024 Career Awards

Keith H. St. John, MT(ASCP), MS, CIC, FAPIC has been an infection preventionist for the past 30+ years. He is the President/CEO of North Star IPC Consulting Services, LLC, and has held various leadership roles in both adult and pediatric academic medical centers, as well as industry. Mr. St. John has co-authored several journal articles, abstracts, blogs, and book chapters; three of the articles having impact at the national/state level to review practices. He has served as a mentor multiple years for both APIC and SHEA. His most recent research interest involves the human factors analysis of disinfecting vascular access needleless connectors. Mr. St. John received his Bachelor of Science degree in Medical Technology from the University of Delaware, and his Master of Science degree in Clinical Microbiology from Thomas Jefferson University. Mr. St. John received additional IPC training at the CDC and the Medical College of Virginia, under the mentorship of C. Glen Mayhall, MD and V. Archer Lamb.

Sarah K. Parker, MD is Professor of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at University of Colorado School of Medicine, and Medical Director of Antimicrobial Stewardship at Children’s Hospital Colorado (CHCO).  After doing basic science in microbiology for many years, Dr. Parker started the CHCO stewardship program in 2011. Her team developed a unique stewardship methodology, Handshake Stewardship. This method has achieved a 40% reduction in antimicrobial use since launch in 2013, with associated cost savings of $2 million annually. With a focus on supporting providers, Handshake Stewardship encourages small interactions with all teams daily, leading to new guidelines, laboratory stewardship, and process improvement projects hospital wide. Handshake Stewardship is now considered a “Best Practice” by The Joint Commission and is highlighted in the CDC’s Core Elements of Hospital Antimicrobial Stewardship. Dr. Parker also collaborates with the Colorado Department of Health and Environment to improve stewardship in the state of Colorado; this collaboration has led to the launch of CASE (Colorado Stewardship Endeavor) and to a statewide mobile phone application with prescribing guidance for all hospitals, with embedded mechanisms to monitor antibiotic use for common infections. Dr. Parker is active nationally, and is a member of the PIDS stewardship committee, and 2024 chair of IDWeek planning for PIDS. Based on her successful advocacy for dedicated stewardship resources, she is part of the SIDP Antimicrobial Stewardship Certificate Program speaking on the topic of business plans. Her program diligently publishes their work, to share potentially generalizable successes. In addition, Dr. Parker is recognized as a physician, repeatedly named one of Denver’s “Best Doctors” and Children’s Hospital Colorado’s “Provider of the Month”. She has a long history of mentorship, with multiple mentees now successfully funded or leading stewardship programs in other institutions.

Dilek Ince, MD is a Clinical Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine. She currently serves as the medical director of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Program and the Transplant Infectious Diseases Service at the University of Iowa Health Care Medical Center. Dr. Ince completed her medical training and an initial infectious diseases and clinical microbiology residency at Istanbul Medical School and a research fellowship in infectious diseases focusing on fluoroquinolone resistance under the mentorship of Dr David Hooper at the Massachusetts General Hospital. She then completed an Internal Medicine residency and an Infectious Diseases fellowship at the University of Iowa and has been practicing there since. Her current efforts focus on antimicrobial stewardship, especially in immunocompromised hosts.

The editors of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology (ICHE) select the most outstanding domestic clinical study manuscript published in ICHE in the full calendar year prior IDWeek.  The 2024 award goes to Mitigating hospital-onset Clostridioides difficile: the impact of an optimized environmental hygiene program in eight hospitals.  The article is based on research looking to evaluate the impact of a standardized, process-validated intervention utilizing daily hospital-wide patient-zone sporicidal disinfectant cleaning on incidence density of healthcare-onset Clostridioides difficile infection (HO-CDI) standardized infection ratios (SIRs).  Authors included Philip C. Carling MD, Lyndsay M. O’Hara PhD, MPH, Anthony D. Harris MD and Russell Olmsted MPH, CIC, FAPIC.   

Regina Berba, MD, MSc, FPCP, FPSMID is an ID physician, clinical epidemiologist and the head of infection control at  

the largest government tertiary referral hospital in the Philippines, the Philippine General Hospital (PGH).  She is also the Head of ID at The Medical City, the main hospital of the largest private healthcare network in the country.   

During the COVID pandemic, Dr. Berba guided the PGH transformation into a Covid-19 Referral Center for the country. She spearheaded several researches, the most important of which is the Philippine COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness surveillance which followed over 2M in its cohort. She recently organized the AMS Caravan to empower Filipino internists and launched the Project PROMISE book to empower Filipino mothers on AMS.        

Dr. Berba was a 2013 SHEA International Ambassador, and now sits as Board member of the Philippine College of Physicians (PCP), the Philippine Society for Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (PSMID) and the International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (ISAC). 

Caroline Quach, O.Q., MD, MSc, FRCPC FCAHS FSHEA started her career as a pediatric ID specialist and medical microbiologist at the Montreal Children’s Hospital. In 2017, she joined the University of Montreal as a Professor in the Departments of Microbiology, ID & Immunology and of Pediatrics. She is an adjunct Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics & Occupational Health at McGill University, and a scientific collaborator at the School of Public Health at Université Libre de Bruxelles. She is the physician in charge of Infection Prevention and control at CHU Sainte-Justine, Montreal’s standalone children’s hospital. Dr. Quach is a clinician-scientist and the Canada Research Chair, Tier 1 in Infection Prevention and Control: from hospital to the community. She is the POPCORN network Director, a network which brings together researchers, clinicians, and patient partners to form a pan-Canadian pediatric research platform. Created in response to COVID-19, POPCORN provides the infrastructure to prepare for future pandemics. 

Emily E. Sickbert-Bennett, PhD, MS, CIC, FSHEA is a Professor in the Department of Medicine-Infectious Diseases at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Medicine and Associate Professor in the Epidemiology Department at the Gillings School of Global Public Health, where she obtained her PhD in Epidemiology and MS in Environmental Microbiology.  She also serves as the Director of Infection Prevention and Antimicrobial Stewardship at the University of North Carolina Medical Center.  Dr. Sickbert-Bennett’s research focuses on infectious disease surveillance, outbreak investigations, prevention of healthcare-associated infections, the role of the environment in healthcare- associated infections, hand hygiene and masking as an infection prevention strategy.   

Chris Nyquist, MD, MSPH is a Professor of Pediatrics in the section of Infectious Disease and Epidemiology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Colorado School of Public Health. Her infectious disease clinical practice is based at Children’s Hospital Colorado where she serves as the Chief Epidemiology Officer responsible for infection prevention and control and occupational health. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan School of Medicine, completed her pediatric residency at UCLA and her Pediatric Infectious Diseases Fellowship and Masters of Science in Public Health at the University of Colorado. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (PIDS), and Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) and a member of Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA). 

John Conly, CM, MD, DSc (Hon,) CCFP, FRCPC, FCAHS, FAMMI, FACP, FIDSA, FSHEA is a Professor of Medicine, University of Calgary, Canada and IPC Medical Director for Calgary Health Zone. He was a former President of the Canadian Infectious Disease Society, past Chairman for the Canadian Committee on Antibiotic Resistance, and a founding member of the Canadian Hospital Epidemiology Committee and the Canadian Nosocomial Infection Surveillance Program. He has served on AMR committees with SHEA and WHO, serving as the senior methodologist for the WHO GDG recommendations on human antimicrobial use in food-producing animals. He currently serves on the Canadian Advisory Group on AMR and is Chair of the WHO IPC Research & Development Expert Group for COVID-19.  He has published over 500 manuscripts, book chapters, technical reports and guidelines and has many career honours including the Canadian Medical Association FNG Starr Award for inspirational lifetime achievements, an honorary Doctor of Science recognizing scholarly achievements in applied sciences and the Order of Canada.  

Linda Mundy, MD, PhD., is a physician, epidemiologist, and healthcare advocate.  As recipient of the SHEA 2024 Suzanne Bradley Reviewer Award, Dr. Mundy is recognized for her thoughtful manuscript reviews and her longevity as an editorial advisory board member of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.  

Dr. Mundy has extensive experience in patient-centric care, clinical research, public health, and the pharmaceutical sciences. She is a sought mentor of doctoral students and has published over 200 peer-review articles and book chapters focused on infectious diseases epidemiology, bacterial and viral transmission dynamics, infection prevention and control, healthcare economics, and clinical trials in support of new drug development.  She is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, the Society of Healthcare Epidemiology of America, and the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Most recently, Dr. Mundy accepted a key infectious diseases position with New York City Health & Hospitals in New York, NY. 

The editors of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology (ICHE) select the most outstanding international clinical study manuscript published in ICHE in the full calendar year prior IDWeek.  The 2024 award goes to Extending outbreak investigation with machine learning and graph theory: benefits of new tools with application to a nosocomial outbreak of a multidrug-resistant organism. Authors involved in this study used an outbreak of vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) that occurred in their hospital from January 1, 2018, until July 31, 2020. The goal of our study was to improve existing processes by applying machine-learning and graph-theoretical methods to a nosocomial outbreak investigation. Authors included Andrew Atkinson PhD, Benjamin Ellenberger MSc, Vanja Piezzi MD, Tanja Kaspar MPH, Luisa Salazar-Vizcaya PhD, Olga Endrich MD, Alexander B. Leichtle MD and Jonas Marschall MD.