Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) describes a set of practices that aim to prevent the spread of infections, including healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and emerging infectious diseases (such as COVID-19) in healthcare facilities and other congregate settings. IPC includes hand hygiene, use of personal protective equipment, safe injection practices, and proper environmental cleaning.

NACCHO’s IPC Champion recognition aims to highlight the IPC achievements of local health departments and honor the staff leading this work. NACCHO IPC Champions are respected individuals working in local public health who are advancing infection prevention and control capacity, activities, guidelines, and/or engagement. They are knowledgeable and enthusiastic about infection prevention and control. They promote and lead HAI prevention initiatives by educating colleagues and partners; preventing and responding to outbreaks; solving problems; and leveraging lessons learned to improve policies and practices.

IPC champions

• Build and strengthen partnerships between local public health and facilities (healthcare and other congregate settings) in their communities to build trust, and develop a reputation as a community IPC resource;
• Facilitate communication between/across facilities to identify and stop inter-facility transmission;
• Identify and respond to outbreaks in facilities of healthcare-associated infections, including COVID-19;
• Strategize to proactively prevent infections and improve IPC efforts;
• Engage and educate internal staff and external partners to increase their buy-in and awareness of IPC;
• Apply lessons learned to improve policies and practices in their community (and potentially, across the state/country);
• Speak up to illustrate the needs of LHDs in this work and to share experiences and insights.

NACCHO will consider applications for nominees supporting IPC in all facility setting types (i.e. both clinical and non-clinical congregate settings).

Selected IPC Champions will be featured on NACCHO’s website and other NACCHO communication channels. IPC champions may have the opportunity to be featured in other NACCHO materials and communications. Individuals may self-nominate or nominate others.

The nomination form can be found HERE.