News release

• Dr. Brian Strom was the recipient of the Sustained Scientific Excellence Award, presented at the 22nd International Conference for Pharmacoepidemiology in Lisbon in August 2006.

• Dr. James D. Lewis has been elected a director of the International Society of Pharmacoepidemiology  (ISPE). He has also been appointed Vice Chair of ISPE’s Education Committee.

• Dr. Robert Gross has been appointed Vice Chair of ISPE’s Membership Committee. 

• Dr. Sean Hennessy holds the position of Immediate Past President of ISPE, and has been appointed Chair of ISPE’s Fellowship & Awards Committee, Management Oversight Committee, and ISPE’s Nominating Committee.

• Dr. Sean Hennessy has been appointed a member of the FDA Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee.

• Dr. Robert Gross has been appointed to the Awards Committee of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).

• Dr. Ebbing Lautenbach has been appointed to the Publications Committee of IDSA.  Dr. Lautenbach also has been appointed Chair of the Publications Committee of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) and is on the editorial board of SHEA’s official journal, Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology. Additionally, he is coeditor of one of SHEA’s official publications, Practical Handbook for Hospital Epidemiologists. 

• Dr. Ebbing Lautenbach is a member of the National Quality Forum, National Voluntary Consensus Standards for the Reporting of Healthcare-Associated Infection Data, Technical Advisory Panel for Indwelling Catheters and Urinary Tract Infections. The National Quality Forum is a private, not-for-profit membership organization created to develop and implement a national strategy for healthcare quality measurement and reporting.

• Drs. Robert Gross and Ebbing Lautenbach have been named Fellows of IDSA.

•  Dr. Ebbing Lautenbach was awarded a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) research grant (RO1) to investigate the impact of infection control interventions on limiting the emergence of multidrug-resistant gram-negative organisms in the hospital setting. 

• Dr. Russell Localio is an active member of the CDC’s National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics.

• Dr. P. J. Brennan serves as Chair of the CDC’s Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee. Under his direction, the Committee developed new guidelines for preventing the spread of multidrug-resistant infections in health care settings. 

• Dr. Joshua Metlay is a member of CDC’s External Advisory Committee, which recently reviewed CDC’s national “Get Smart” campaign to promote judicious antibiotic use in outpatient settings. 

• Dr.  P. J. Brennan is Vice President of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA).

• Dr. Brian Strom was interviewed on October 9, 2006 on the National Public Radio (NPR) program “All Things Considered” regarding recommended changes to the FDA’s drug-approval process.  The radio segment, entitled “Experts Call for Changes to FDA Drug Approval,” can be heard at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6226295.  Dr. Strom was also quoted in the Wall Street Journal of December 6th in the column by Carl Bialik entitled “Relatively Small Number of Deaths Have Big Impact in Pfizer Drug Trial.” The article discusses Pfizer’s decision to abandon a potential blockbuster cholesterol drug following the deaths... In discussing the risk analysis and Pfizer’s decision, Dr. Strom offered, “If you’re talking about a drug to cure cancer when there is no other treatment, you would tolerate an enormous risk before pulling the plug. Where you’re talking about a drug to treat allergies, where there are other drugs available and they are safe, you would tolerate much less risk.” The article can be accessed at: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/ SB116535192161641418- 3B4PG_HQwyA73qzZaetkmaA8RvU_20070105.html? mod=tff_article. 

• Dr. John Holmes has been elected a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics, which honors individuals from the United States and abroad who have made significant and sustained contributions to the field of medical informatics. 

• The publication of Dr. David Margolis’s study, “Antibiotic treatment of acne may be associated with upper respiratory tract infections,” in Archives of Dermatology, generated much attention in the press, including CNN, FOX, ABC, NBC, Reuters, AP, and CBS, and an interview on National Public Radio.  Dr. Margolis has now been awarded a National Institutes of Health Research Project Grant (R01) to conduct a full-scale study of the question addressed in this article, which originated from pilot studies conducted within PennCERT.  A serendipitous by-product of Dr. Margolis’ work is a patent application for a new treatment, bacteria-derived blis (bacteriocin-like inhibitory substances), as an alternative to the use of antibiotics in the treatment of acne.