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Resources Washington University Medical Center, located along the eastern edge of Forest Park in the Central West End of St. Louis, consists of the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center, Barnes-Jewish Hospital, Central Institute for the Deaf, St. Louis Children’s Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine. Integral units within the medical center include the Center for Advanced Medicine, Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, the Institute for Biomedical Computing, the Eric P. Newman Education Center and the Irene Walter Johnson Institute of Rehabilitation. A network of pedestrian bridges connects these facilities. The Becker Medical Library manages a high-performance network infrastructure that allows physicians to securely access clinical information resources throughout the medical center, as well as the Internet. The School of Medicine provides a unique environment for the fellow interested in either clinical or laboratory investigations of infectious diseases. The hospitals in the training program operate nearly 1,500 acute care beds, with more than 50,000 hospital admissions annually. These hospitals act as tertiary care referral centers for many patients throughout the Midwest. The incorporation of the medical center hospitals into the BJC HealthCare network, a corporation of 13 hospitals throughout Missouri and southern Illinois, has insured a continued robust referral base in the era of managed care. Through computer programs developed by Division faculty in association with others in the Department of Medicine and the Division of Biostatistics, investigators in the Division are able to track all positive cultures, antibiotic therapy and patient outcome. This is a powerful tool for investigations of hospital epidemiology and is now planned for extension to all hospitals in the extended BJC referral network. Hospital epidemiology training is offered to all fellows, and further specialization in this area as a clinical investigator is available. The Division operates an NIH-supported AIDS Clinical Trials Unit (ACTU), with more than 200 new patients enrolled in clinical trials annually. The presence of the ACTU, coupled with an active HIV clinic that follows approximately 875 HIV-positive patients, offers many clinical research opportunities in HIV disease and AIDS (including training in the design and conduct of clinical trials) as well as the opportunity for training in state-of-the-art care for HIV-positive patients. Collaborative research opportunities with investigators conducting clinical and laboratory research in HIV-related virology, neurology, hepatology and malignancy are also available, as are active clinical research and training programs in sexually transmitted diseases and tuberculosis. The research laboratories of the fellowship training program operate with the philosophy that investigations into the pathogenesis of infectious diseases are carried out at the highest possible molecular resolution. Laboratories are focused on investigations into the pathogenesis of bacterial, fungal, parasitic, viral and mycobacterial diseases. Another group is interested in host defenses. In 2004, the research faculty of the Division were principal investigators on NIH grants totaling more than $15 million. Fellows in research training are supported by an NIH-sponsored Infectious Diseases/Basic Microbial Pathogenesis Training Grant, now in its 26th year.
Division of Infectious Diseases
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