The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc (APIC) is a multidisciplinary voluntary international organization with over 10,000 members. Its purpose is to influence, support, and improve the quality of healthcare through the practice and management of infection control and the application of epidemiology in all health settings. The organization, which is based in Washington, DC, is led by an elected board of members who volunteer their time and expertise.

Whatever your line of business, chances are the rate of change you are experiencing is outrunning your organization's ability to keep up. This environment challenges business leaders to redesign their enterprises using revolutionary change strategies. Evolutionary change processes that were successful in the past are ineffective in the competitive global marketplace. However, several viewpoints for organizational redesign exist. For example, noted author Peter Senge believes in the importance of creating a learning organization. He argues that an “organization doesn't start out great, it learns to be great. Learning organizations are those where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective organization is set free, and where people are continually learning to learn together.”l Senge describes those organizations that will excel in the future as those that discover how to tap people's commitment and capacity to learn at all levels in the organization. In times of rapid change, employees' ability to analyze work processes and to improve them can be the difference between organizational success and failure. Many organizations accept this theory but have difficulty determining how to create a learning organization through empowering and energizing the work force.

The impact of US-style infection control programs is global. There are many Asian countries that have translated US-style infection control programs into their own programs, but reports of those efforts are rarely published in English. This article describes the development of infection control in Taiwan and the development of intensive infection surveillance and control programs in a pioneer acute-care medical center that has 3,000 beds. The article also discusses problems that have arisen in translation of US infection control practices.

An outbreak of ventilator-associated Pseudomonas aeruginosa respiratory infections in an intensive care unit of a teaching hospital was found to be associated with contaminated food coloring dye. Serotyping and bacteriocin typing indicated that the same strain of Pseudomonas was isolated from the food dye and from the respiratory cultures of the majority of patients. This observation lends credence to the importance of gastric colonization preceding pneumonia in ventilated patients.

The Quality Indicator Study Group was created by the governing boards of three national professional organizations that have interest and experience in epidemiology, nosocomial infection control and prevention, and quality of care improvement. The Study Group has reviewed the existing literature concerning quality indicators (QIs), interviewed experts in the field, and focused on how best to evaluate such indicators, with an emphasis on nosocomial infection indicators as a paradigm for all QIs. In this report, we review pertinent issues and, where possible, provide specific advice on how to evaluate QIs and QI systems.

Today, I want to touch on four different areas that I think will be of interest to you. I am going to talk about healthcare reform, quality management research within the Clinton Administration, efforts to fight on-the-job infection of healthcare workers, and the President's Childhood Immunization Initiative.