Katherine (Kate) Ellingson, PhD, joined the College of Public Health in 2017 following 10 years of public service as a healthcare epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Oregon State Health Department. While at CDC, she investigated the transmission of multidrug-resistant organisms in healthcare settings, evaluated initiatives to prevent healthcare-associated infections, built capacity for infection prevention in resource-limited settings, and served as the agency’s subject matter expert for hand hygiene in healthcare. At the Oregon Health Department, she directed the state’s mandatory healthcare-associated infection reporting program, investigated infectious disease outbreaks and led injection safety promotion efforts.
Areas of Expertise:
- Healthcare-associated infections
- Infection prevention in healthcare
- Antimicrobial resistance and stewardship
- Program evaluation
- Impact assessment through time-series analyses
- Hand hygiene in healthcare settings
- Transfusion safety
- Outbreak investigation
- Field epidemiology
- Surveillance and capacity-building in resource-limited settings
- Injection safety in healthcare
- Healthcare transitions
- Disease Prevention
- Epidemiology
- Infectious Disease