Latest / The SHEA Podcast / A Conversation with SHEA 2025 President David J. Weber

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A Conversation with SHEA 2025 President David J. Weber · The SHEA Podcast

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Shay's podcast.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: I am Dr.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Tom Talbot, the Chief Hospital Epidemiologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm wrapping up my year as Shay President, and I'm excited to serve as today's moderator as we meet Shay's 2025 president, Dr.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: David Weber.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: After 100 Shay Town Halls and serving as an associate editor of IGE, among many other roles, I'm not sure Dr.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Weber needs much of an introduction to Shay members.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Dr.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Weber is the Charles Addison and Elizabeth Ann Sanders distinguished professor of medicine and associate chief medical officer at UNC Medical Center.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: He also serves in the role of medical director for the Department of Infection Prevention at UNC Medical Center.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: I work with Dr.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Weber for many years, and I'm very excited to see him in his role as professor as SHA president to see where he takes our society in 2025.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the podcast, Dr.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Weber.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Can you start?
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Let's start off by kind of talking about how you first got involved in SHA and volunteering in SHA and what motivated you to continue on your leadership path to president.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it really dates back to Drs.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Glenn Mayhol and Richard Wentzell, some of the giants in the field of infection prevention.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: They were my inspiration for joining SHA and becoming involved in infection control hospital epidemiology.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Mayhol involved me both in the publications committee and the annual meeting committee.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then Dr.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Wentzel appointed me as subsection editor for occupational health for ICHI in 1993.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's fantastic.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: I know you've had many other activities with the Shea and volunteering.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Can you share experience, kind of thinking to your years of training and your journey in healthcare at the and infection prevention that really impacted you and kind of how it set you on your pathway and kind of a lifelong career in the field?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've always enjoyed infectious diseases.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: I enjoy the uh uh the diagnostic part of infectious diseases and the public health parts of infectious diseases.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: When I was a fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, I studied under Cy Hopkins, the hospital epidemiologists, and I obtained a uh uh master's in public health at Harvard.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: But what I what really I found interesting, I helped work up an outbreak of Aspergillus infections that turned out to be related throughout the hospital to construction in the radiology department, and therefore went unrecognized for almost two years because the patients were scattered among the hospital.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: This made me realize uh how important infection prevention was and uh how it really improved the patient's safety and led me to deciding then to follow a career uh as a hospital epidemiologist.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's great.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's often, you know, the mentors that we have and those acute events that just kind of stimulate the excitement.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: I have a similar story as yours, just kind of get you involved in the career.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk a little bit about balancing a leadership role in volunteering with professional and personal commitment and your personal commitment.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got a regular job.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: We already listed all your big titles that you do for UNC.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, in addition to Shay, talk to the listeners a little bit about how um you balance the volunteering with Shay and your personal commitments, your professional commitments, and not to mention your family life.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: You have a loving family that I know you spend a lot of time with.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: How do you how do you balance all those activities and how do you manage that?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then any tips for maybe new members or those just starting out that want to get involved in Shay?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm very proud.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: I have uh three uh daughters and now uh three grandchildren and one more on the way.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And frankly, if I knew how much more fun it was to be a grandparent than a parent, I probably would have done it first.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's important to state explicitly that all healthcare personnel, not just those of us in infection prevention, we need to place uh our health and our families' health first.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: So families should come first, and uh people, particularly in training years, which is can be very uh difficult, uh, need to place their health and their family first.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: However, my one of my life's goals, as I've mentioned already, has been to improve the health of the public.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: I've uh focused this most by achieving this goal by training infectious disease fellows and uh mentoring PhD and uh uh MPH students, and I've trained somewhere around 60 students uh with an MPH or a PhD, and I really enjoy uh teaching, one of my favorite activities, but it's a multiplying effect.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: So if I train 60 people or then go out and even train 10 or 20 people, you have an enormous uh impact on the public health uh there.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: These pursuits have multiplied again just beyond my patient care, which I also enjoy.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I enjoy uh both research and uh uh the issues like and she in trying to help improve uh uh the health of the public by solving little problems and by every single day by just uh uh working to assure good patient care and also protecting our healthcare personnel.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's very good.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I think just you your your focus in occupational infection prevention really highlights your first statement about the health of the healthcare workers and themselves and the families.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: So you've kind of put that as part of your mission.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for that.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Let's pivot a little bit.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: So, given the current landscape at healthcare, which has been uh a little tumultuous and I think uh has some unknowns moving forward, what do you see as some of the most significant challenges in the fields of healthcare epi, effective prevention, and microbial stewardship?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: And importantly, what's Shay's role in addressing these as we move forward?
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, first of all, I think the key challenges are uh several, and they include increasing science denialism in general, reduced public, and political support for public health, uh, an aging population, and uh reductions of potentially both aging worse for us and stressed out workforce.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: However, I also see key advances including artificial intelligence and machine learning, uh, wider use of the electronic medical record leading to improved uh uh surveillance, growth of implementation sciences, which is I think particularly important.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's not enough just to do a guideline, say here's what the guideline is without explaining how you implement uh those uh recommendations, a development of antimicrobial stewardship, which is a much younger field and growing field compared to hospital epidemiology, and advances in molecular epidemiology, which has certainly helped in outbreak investigations.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think Shay has a critical role to play in these, and first uh educating the public, which is important given the science denialism and political leadership as well regarding HII prevention, and leading the uh widespread use of uh key advances, many of which I've just mentioned, both in terms of keeping our membership up to date with all of these, as well as implementing these in all the healthcare institutions with which we work.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I think your leadership as we move into this, it will be very exciting.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because so let's pivot to kind of my last question is for your tenure as president, what's your vision for Shay?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: And are there specific goals or initiatives that you hope to accomplish over the course of the year?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I've always appreciated Shay's active role and striving to improve diversity in both the society and its leadership, plus the inclusion of younger individuals in both committees and decision making.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I hope to continue all of these and even enhance these practices.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: A key uh challenge will be to educate the public and political leadership about the need to continue to improve public health, provide support, reduce healthcare associated infections.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: We obviously need to continue to help prepare the public as well as work within our healthcare facilities for pandemic planning.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, uh we've just almost done with uh the Marburg outbreak in Rwanda.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: We have faced with an H5N1 pandemic in the future, continued problems with MPOX, and we need to be involved in all of those for protecting our visitors, our patients, uh, and our staff.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: As well as I would like to see us continue to provide our membership with uh evidence-based guidelines and increasingly include new technologies, uh, how they can be used in those guidelines to reduce HAIs, as well as improving implementation science and knowledge about how to implement these new guidelines among our membership and the public.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, David, uh maybe be the first to wish you the best of luck.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: You'll be an outstanding president for Shay, and thank you very much today for sharing your perspectives and experiences.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to thank you, first of all, thank you for that uh wonderful introduction.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: I also want to thank you for your amazing job and leading Shay in this past uh year, and uh look forward to your continued involvement in Shay as immediate past president and their many roles that you'll have.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, David, and thanks to everyone.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's been an honor to be president this year and look forward to seeing and continue to serve the society.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that concludes this episode of the Shea podcast, and we thank all of you for tuning in.