Speakers

Karen Brody has worked in healthcare for over 22 years, starting her healthcare career as a certified nursing assistant in a skilled nursing facility in 2002, and becoming a registered nurse in 2008. She worked at Trinitas Regional Medical Center in New Jersey as a staff nurse from 2008-2010 and then as an RN clinical coordinator from 2010-2016. While in that role, in 2014, she became certified in gerontological nursing. She then moved into infection control, obtaining her CIC^® in 2018. She continued working at Trinitas Regional Medical Center from 2016-2021 as an infection preventionist managing infection prevention in various settings, including acute care, long-term care, behavioral health and dialysis.

In 2021, Brody started working as an infection preventionist at Mount Sinai Brooklyn. In 2023, she moved up to the assistant director role where she remained until December 2024 when she assumed her current position. She is actively engaged in the Greater NY APIC chapter, serving on the board of directors from 2023-2024 and currently serving as the president-elect. She has lectured at the Northeastern Infection Control Educators “Basic Course for Principals of Infection Prevention and Control” since 2019. She received United Hospital Fund’s Quality Improvement Champion Award in 2023 for her work in enhancing screening surveillance for Candida auris in her facility to prevent outbreaks. Brody received her MSN in nursing education in 2018.

Ernest Clement has been a nurse for over 35 years with experience in critical care, inpatient and outpatient oncology, and infection control and prevention. He has worked in the acute care and outpatient settings. Currently, he is the director of the Bureau of Healthcare Associated Infections for DOH. The bureau is responsible for providing infection prevention and control guidance to healthcare facilities in New York state, auditing hospital NHSN reporting for certain reportable infections and addressing antimicrobial resistance and stewardship across the state. He has extensive experience investigating outbreaks of influenza, legionellosis, bloodborne pathogen exposures and infection control breaches, including breaches in medical equipment reprocessing. He holds a certification in infection control and teaches several online master’s level infection prevention and control and epidemiology courses. He received his BSN from SUNY Utica-Rome and his MSN from the University of Phoenix.

Russ Grant is nationally certified in infection control and epidemiology and has long-term care certification in infection prevention from the Certification Board of Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. He is nationally certified as a medical laboratory technologist by the American Society of Clinical Pathology and holds New York state licensure as a medical technologist.

Grant has worked in infection prevention for 18 years and has a broad range of infection prevention experience in healthcare settings, including acute care, long-term care, ambulatory surgical centers, outpatient, dialysis, dental and critical access hospitals. His expertise was instrumental in leading the Bassett Network through the COVID-19 pandemic. Grant’s current focus is in developing a system-wide infection prevention program for an integrated healthcare network. He also serves in a consultative, supportive and collaborative capacity with other healthcare organizations.

Grant has been an active member of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology since 2007. He served as a member of the New York State Antimicrobial Resistance Task Force from 2018 to 2020 and is currently serving on the Technical Advisory Workgroup for the New York State Department of Epidemiology. Grant has been a guest speaker in many settings including statewide and regional APIC conferences, HANYS educational events and Excellus healthcare improvement conferences. He also enjoys participating as a regular guest speaker at local health department conferences and various academic institutions in the central New York region.

As senior vice president of nursing at Erie County Medical Center, Charlene Ludlow is responsible for nursing operations and high-quality care delivery to diverse populations across multiple service lines including medical-surgical, critical care, emergency, outpatient and behavioral health. Ludlow’s experience includes more than ten years as chief patient safety officer at ECMC, overseeing facility-wide infection prevention and patient safety, and serving as vice president of quality and patient safety at Great Lakes Health. Ludlow is a board member of the New York State APIC Coordinating Council and a member of the New York State Technical Advisory Workgroup for Infection Prevention.

Dr. Belinda Ostrowsky is currently a field medical officer at CDC, Division of Quality Healthcare Promotion in New York. She works closely with DOH, other public health, facility and professional groups on healthcare-associated infections, antimicrobial resistance and Antimicrobial Stewardship Program topics, including C. auris and MDROs. Previously, she was the director of epidemiology, stewardship and infection prevention at Montefiore Einstein, and remains a clinical associate professor. She is a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, and was the SHEA chairperson for IDWeek 2023.

Ann Marie Pettis has more than 30 years of experience as an infection preventionist with expertise primarily in acute and ambulatory healthcare. She has published articles in peer-reviewed journals and trade publications and lectured locally, nationally and internationally. She has served as both president and legislative representative for the local chapter of the Association of Professionals in Infection Prevention and Epidemiology and held several voluntary and elected positions for the national APIC. Pettis is an APIC fellow and past president of APIC International.

Past President
New York State APIC Coordinating Council

Rodolfo Simons has been an active member of APIC, Chapter 13, for more than 20 years and held the position of chapter president in 2013. He is the current past president of the New York State APIC Coordinating Council. Since 2019, Simons has been an assistant director at Mount Sinai Hospital. Before joining Mount Sinai Hospital, he worked at Montefiore Medical Center for 10 years and, prior to that, for seven years as an infection control practitioner at Maimonides Medical Center.

Assistant Professor, Medicine
Johns Hopkins University

‌Dr. Geeta Sood is a medical director for the Bureau of Healthcare Associated Infections and assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University. She also serves as associate hospital epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center and health service researcher at Hopkins Health System.

Sood completed her medical training residency in internal medicine and fellowship training in infectious diseases at Temple University Medical School. She served as an associate program director and student clerkship director in internal medicine at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia before moving to Abington Memorial Hospital where she was the hospital epidemiologist. She was recruited to Johns Hopkins University in 2011 as the hospital epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, where she led several successful process improvement interventions, particularly in the burn intensive care unit, for which she won the Armstrong Clinical Excellence Award in Patient Safety in 2015.

Sood is a member of the Maryland Healthcare-associated Infections Advisory Board, the Health Service Cost Service Performance Measurement Workgroup, former co-chair for the Patient Safety Committee at the National Quality Forum and chair of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America Quality Metrics Task Force. She has taught at the SHEA fellow’s course from 2015-2018 and was vice-chair and chair for the SHEA/CDC training course from 2019-2021. She serves on the editorial board for the American Journal of Infection Control.

Her research interests include using big data and machine learning algorithms to predict and ultimately mitigate the risk of developing healthcare-associated infections.

Dr. Heidi Torres received her undergraduate degree in biology and her medical degree from the University of Puerto Rico, where she is from originally. After graduating with honors, she completed a residency in internal medicine at UT Health in San Antonio, Texas before moving to New York to pursue a fellowship in infectious diseases with the Weill Cornell Medicine program. During this fellowship, Torres became interested in infection control and epidemiology. She currently serves as an attending physician of infectious diseases and assistant hospital epidemiologist for the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. She is dual board-certified in internal medicine and infectious diseases. Her research interests include infection prevention, epidemiology, emerging diseases and the prevention of communicable diseases after a disaster.

President
New York State APIC Coordinating Council

Michelle Vignari is the director of infection prevention for University of Rochester Medical Center’s Highland Hospital and an independent infection prevention consultant. Currently working in an acute care hospital setting, she also has vast experience in ambulatory and long-term care.

Vignari has more than 27 years of practical clinical and leadership experience and is board-certified in infection prevention and epidemiology.

In 2011, Vignari was one of 12 professionals nationally chosen by APIC as a “Hero in Infection Prevention” and, in 2017, was awarded the March of Dimes’ Nurse of the Year Award in infection prevention.

She is an active member of APIC and is currently the past president of her local chapter: Rochester Finger Lakes, Chapter 107. Vignari is president of the New York APIC Coordinating Council and serves on the DOH Technical Advisory Committee, a council of subject matter experts who work with DOH.

Vignari has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and continues to contribute to the infection prevention and scientific community.