Dr. Sara Elizabeth Cosgrove, MD

Dr. Cosgrove is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Disease (ID) at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and has a joint appointment in the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is the Director of Research for the ID Fellowship Program and PI of the T32 training grant that supports ID fellow training. She serves as the Director of the Department of Antimicrobial Stewardship and an Associate Hospital Epidemiologist at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Cosgrove’s research interests include the epidemiology and outcomes of antimicrobial resistance, the development of tools and programs to promote the rational use of antimicrobials, the prevention of hospital-acquired infections, and the epidemiology and management of S. aureus bacteremia. Early in her career, she recognized the critical need to study antimicrobial stewardship strategies and has led a series of outcomes studies over the past 20 years that have defined …the practice of antimicrobial stewardship in the United States. Her recent research focuses on strategies for implementation of antimicrobial stewardship activities across all healthcare settings via a large, multi-center project including hospitals, long-term care facilities and ambulatory practices funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and approaches to improve how antibiotics are given via a randomized trial to compare intravenous and oral therapy for Gram negative bacteremia funded by PCORI. She is the PI of the Johns Hopkins Prevention Epicenter, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded program that integrates antimicrobial stewardship, healthcare epidemiology, human factors engineering, data science, and implementation science to address knowledge gaps and develop strategies to optimize patient safety by preventing transmission of pathogens and improving antibiotic use in diverse healthcare settings and patient populations. She is a past voting member of the Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria. She is a Past President of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology’s Board of Directors. Dr. Cosgrove received her undergraduate degree from Columbia College, her medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine, and her master of science degree in epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health. She completed her postgraduate training in internal medicine at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and underwent subsequent training in ID at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.