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Leonard Mermel, DO, ScM, AM (Hon)

Leonard Mermel, DO, ScM, AM (Hon), is an expert in hospital-acquired infection control and prevention and has published and lectured on avian flu. He is the medical director of the department of infection control at Rhode Island Hospital and specializes in the prevention and management of infections related to intravascular devices.

Mermel is professor of medicine at Brown Medical School. He has co-authored two national guidelines for the prevention and management of intravascular catheter-related infections and has co-authored more than 150 textbook chapters, abstracts and articles in peer reviewed journals in the area of infectious disease. He has lectured extensively around the world.

He is immediate past president of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology, an organization that brings together physicians from across the United States involved in preventing the spread of infection in hospitals. This society has focused on how to prevent the spread of pandemic flu in hospitals and was the first organization to recommend mandatory flu vaccines for health care workers.

He is a Technical Expert Panel member of the Medicare Patient Safety Task Force for the Department of Health and Human Services and a consultant for the Center for Biodefense and Emerging Pathogens at Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island and the Rhode Island Department of Health.

Mermel earned his master of science degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health and received his doctor of osteopathy degree from the University of Osteopathic Medicine and Health Sciences. He joined Rhode Island Hospital as an attending physician in the division of infectious disease in 1991.

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