NYP/WC Residency Program Graduate Receives "Service to America Award"

Palmore-NIH-Award-2013
Dr. Palmore 2nd from the right

Dr. Tara Palmore, a graduate of the NYP/WC residency training program in internal medicine, has received a 2013 "Service to America Award" (Science and Environmental Medal). A federal employee with the NIH, she was instrumental in stopping the spread of a deadly hospital-acquired infection leading to a groundbreaking model for the health care industry. The achievement was the result of a "first-ever" genome sequencing used to identify the source and trace the transmission of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The deadly multidrug-resistant strain involved was Klebsiella penumoniae. It first appeared at the NIH's Clinical Center in June 2011, via a patient from a health care facility in New York. Other patients soon acquired the bacteria at the NIH center, as Dr. Palmore and team worked rigorously to control the outbreak. Using the DNA sequencing tool to examine bacteria from each patient they were able to trace the strain to a single source.

Director of the NIH Clinical Center, Dr. John Gallin, stated that the advancement is "a magnificent demonstration" of how a hospital can contain these infections when they occur. "With this new genomic approach," he explained, "we can now with exquisite precision track the evolution of an infection in a hospital and from one hospital to another, one city to another, and one country to another."

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