What can $2.1 billion do for infection control in the wake of COVID-19?

Wolters Kluwer Health

What: The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on Friday that the agency will be investing $2.1 billion to improve infection prevention and control activities across the U.S. public health and healthcare sectors.

Why: The investment will allow the United States to improve public health and the quality of healthcare, including addressing healthcare-related inequities. According to the CDC announcement the funds will: "...assist healthcare personnel to prevent infections more effectively in healthcare settings, support rapid response to detect and contain infectious organisms, enhance laboratory capacity, and engage in innovation targeted at combating infectious disease threats. Improvements in infection prevention will span the healthcare continuum, including 6,000 hospitals, 15,400 nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, 7,900 dialysis clinics, and 4,700 ambulatory surgery centers, and will extend to other outpatient settings."

Who: Mackenzie Weise, MPH, CIC, Infection Prevention Clinical Program Manager for Clinical Surveillance & Compliance, Wolters Kluwer, is a trained epidemiologist with over 12 years of experience in the areas of infectious diseases, data analytics, and health informatics. She believes that the multi-billion-dollar investment the White House is making will make significant impacts as follows:

"The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light a significant number of issues with the state of infection prevention and control (IPC) in the U.S. This new $2.1 billion investment by the Biden-Harris administration to improve IPC activities will help to implement robust efforts from large public settings all the way to patients' bedsides. Key parts of this initiative include:

• $500 million will be awarded to jurisdictional health departments in October 2021 to fund the staffing, training and deployment of specialized strike teams to assist skilled nursing facilities, nursing homes and other long-term care facilities in the fight against COVID-19 to help protect some of our most vulnerable populations.

• $385 million will be awarded to jurisdictional health departments in October 2021 to strengthen five critical areas including 1) Strengthening state capacity to prevent, detect, and contain infectious disease threats across healthcare settings, 2) Laboratory capacity for healthcare, 3) CDC's Project Firstline national training collaborative for healthcare infection control, 4) CDC's National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) healthcare-associated infection tracking system, along with 5) Antibiotic stewardship efforts to address issues related to antibiotic use.

• $880 million will be used over several years to support healthcare partners, academic institutions, and other nonprofit partners to develop new prevention interventions and capacities for infection prevention and control training, data collection, and technical assistance."

How: Contact Ashley Beine at [email protected] to schedule an interview with Mackenzie Weise. Journalists may also publish the quote above with proper attribution.

About Wolters Kluwer

Wolters Kluwer (WKL) is a global leader in professional information, software solutions, and services for the clinicians, nurses, accountants, lawyers, and tax, finance, audit, risk, compliance, and regulatory sectors. We help our customers make critical decisions every day by providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with advanced technology and services.

Wolters Kluwer reported 2020 annual revenues of ?4.6 billion. The group serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries, and employs approximately 19,200 people worldwide. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands.

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