Developing your approach to infection prevention

I spent some more time recently thinking about horizontal strategies for infection prevention in preparation for an upcoming talk. The slide below compares and contrasts the differences between vertical and horizontal approaches.

	Vertical	Horizontal
Goal	Reduce infection or colonization due to specific pathogen(s) [pathogen-based]	Reduce all infections [population-based]
Application	Selective or universal	Generally universal
Interventions	Unipotent Application of a technology	Multipotent Modification of HCW behavior
Resource utilization	Typically high	Lower
Philosophy	Exceptionalism (some organisms are more important than others)	Utilitarianism
Values favored	Hospital	Patient
Temporal orientation/ perspective	Present / short-term	Present & future / long-term
Examples	MDRO ADI Mandating influenza vaccine for HCWs	Hand hygiene Bare below the elbows Chlorhexidine bathing Care bundles Reducing presenteeism

By the way, this talk is part of a virtual conference on February 15-16 sponsored by Infection Control Today. You can register for free here.