Key points
CDC's Prevention Epicenters Program is an innovative research program working to improve healthcare quality and patient safety. CDC's Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion (DHQP) began the Prevention Epicenters Program in 1997 to address important scientific questions.
Overview
The goal of the Prevention Epicenters Program is to work directly with a network of academic medical centers to address important scientific questions about:
- Prevention of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs).
- Stopping the spread of antimicrobial-resistant germs.
- Microbiome health (gut bacteria).
- Other healthcare-associated adverse events.
Through the Prevention Epicenters Program, academic leaders in healthcare epidemiology work together and with CDC to conduct research designed to fill gaps in public health knowledge. The emphasis on multi-center collaborative research projects has been extremely valuable to the field. The Prevention Epicenters Program has successfully translated several arms of research into clinical best practices and published hundreds of articles in peer-reviewed journals. In recent years, CDC has funded eleven Epicenters.