If those of us involved in the world of infection control and prevention lived in Ancient Greece, we would have surely found a home in the followers of Hygieia, the mythical goddess of cleanliness and sanitation and the origin of the word hygiene. While her sisters were worrying about healing, recuperation, and remedy, Hygieia was working to prevent illness by cleaning and advocating sanitary practices. (Sound familiar?) In today's post, the last in our series recognizing Women's History Month, we'll take a look at this figure, what she represented, and what she can teach us about the origins of the field of infection prevention.

In today's post, we take a look back into the history of microbiology in our continued celebration of Women's History Month. The field of bacteriology started to pick up steam at the beginning of the 1900s, well before the time when women started receiving the same educational opportunities as their male peers. Nonetheless, one of the leaders of the field was Alice Catherine Evans, a researcher who overcame professional and cultural bias while making breakthrough discoveries that saved countless lives.

Thanks to films like Hidden Figures and the growing attention to the role women
play NASA, we are becoming aware of just how critical women have been throughout the development of our nation's space program. Not only in the fields of mathematics, computing, engineering, and aeronautics, women at NASA have also been a vital part of biological research. At critical intersections of space and microcosm exploration, there have been women scientists at the cutting edge.

Just a week before the beginning of Patient Safety Week 2019, a disheartening report has come out of the CDC showing that no significant reductions in national MRSA rates have been seen since 2013. While previous years had seen an average of 17% reductions annually, this progress slowed to 7% per year from 2013-2016. The CDC's conclusions? We'll explore them in today's post.

A new trend in hospital design has been popping up in the past few years: Micro-hospitals. As our nation's health care options grow, incorporating more satellite facilities, ambulatory centers, and specialized hospitals, the need for new, huge acute care hospitals has shifted to smaller models. In today's post, we'll look at the most common description of one of the smallest types of emerging facilities and some possible implications for infection control and prevention.