PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release
May 4, 2006

Contact: CDC Press Office
(404) 639-3286

CDC Invests $10 million for Research to Reduce Infections in Healthcare Settings

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today announced an award of $10 million for new
research to five academic centers as part of its Prevention Epicenter grant program, which supports efforts
to develop and test innovative approaches to reducing infections in healthcare settings.

CDC estimates that each year about 2 million infections are acquired in healthcare settings, resulting in about
90,000 deaths and more than $4.5 billion in excess healthcare costs. With the emergence of drug-resistant
infections and new pathogens in healthcare settings, new strategies to detect and reduce healthcare-associated
infections become even more critical.

"We're investing in these prevention epicenters because we want to continue to improve patient health," said
Dr. Denise Cardo, Director of CDC's Division of Healthcare Quality and Promotion. "By focusing on some
of the most difficult and persistent problems facing healthcare institutions today, these epicenters will help make
healthcare safer for everyone."

The new prevention epicenters' work focuses on finding better ways to identify and prevent healthcare
associated infections, including antimicrobial resistant infections, surgical site infections, Clostridium
difficile-associated diarrhea, drug-resistant staph infections and catheterassociated bloodstream infections.

Listed below are the names of the principal investigators and their institutions, representing 58 affiliated hospitals:
Matthew Samore, M.D., University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah
Victoria Fraser, M.D., Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri
Kurt B. Stevenson, M.D., M.P.H, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
Richard Platt, M.D., Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare, Boston, Massachusetts
Robert Weinstein, M.D., Cook County Bureau of Health Services and Rush University Medical
Center, Chicago, Illinois

CDC began the Prevention Epicenter program in 1997 to promote new ways to address difficult problems such as
reducing the burden of healthcare-associated infections and antibiotic resistance. CDC names new prevention
epicenters every five years based on peer-reviewed grant applications. The prevention epicenters select and collaborate
on joint research projects.

In recent years, the work of prevention epicenters has advanced knowledge on improving judicious antimicrobial use
in hospitals, understanding and preventing the transmission of antimicrobial resistant organisms in hospitals, developing
better ways to identify infections following surgery and preventing catheter-associated bloodstream infections among
patients.

For more information about CDC's Prevention Epicenters please visit:
www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dhqp/epicenter.html

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DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES