Kathy Eklund, RDH, MHP

Kathy Eklund is the Sr. Director of Occupational Health and Safety, and the Forsyth Research Subject & Patient Safety Advocate at The Forsyth Institute. She is adjunct faculty at Regis College, Dental Hygiene Program, teaching a senior-level course, Evidence-Based Decision Making. Ms. Eklund serves as faculty for the New England AIDS Education and Training Center and HIVdent.org. She is the Chair of the Organization for Safety Asepsis and Prevention (OSAP) Foundation Board of Directors and has been an active member of OSAP since 1985. Over the past 38 years, Ms. Eklund has published papers and contributed to several texts on infection control & safety and is an author of the CDC Guidelines for Infection Control in Dental Health-Care Settings- 2003. She has lectured nationally and internationally on these topics.

Michele Neuburger, DDS, MPH

Dr. Neuburger is a dental officer in CDC’s Division of Oral Health. Dr. Neuburger joined the division in February 2015, where she focuses on issues related to infection prevention and control and dental public health. She holds a Doctor of Dental Surgery degree from the University of Michigan School of Dentistry and a Master of Public Health degree from the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University located in Atlanta, Georgia. In addition, she completed a dental public health residency and a research fellowship at CDC and is a Diplomate of the American Board of Dental Public Health.

Sylvia Garcia-Houchins, MBA, RN, CIC

Sylvia Garcia-Houchins is the Director, Infection Prevention and Control and an Ambulatory Care Surveyor. In these roles, she is responsible for the oversight of infection prevention and control for The Joint Commission and surveying the standards in the Comprehensive Accreditation Manual/Accreditation Manual for Ambulatory Care.

Ms. Garcia-Houchins has over 30 years of experience in infection control, as well as eight years of clinical microbiology experience. Most recently, she served as the Director, Infection Control at University of Chicago Medicine and was also an intermittent consultant for Joint Commission Resources for 10 years. Ms. Garcia-Houchins has provided infection prevention and control consultation, assessment, and education in a variety of health care settings including hospitals, health clinics, ambulatory surgery, and dialysis centers both domestically and internationally. Her specialty areas of interest include disinfection and sterilization, dialysis, infection prevention during renovation and construction, and control of Legionella and other waterborne pathogens. One of the highlights of her career has been training health care professionals in Saudi Arabia as Infection Preventionists. She served as a test writer and reviewer for the Certification Board of Infection Control and Epidemiology, and has also authored numerous articles and book chapters related to infection control including a chapter in the APIC Text and the Cleaning, Disinfection and Sterilization Chapter in The APIC/JCR Infection Prevention and Control Workbook, 4th Edition.

Ms. Garcia-Houchins earned a degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, a master’s of business administration from the Keller Graduate School of Management, and her nursing degree from Truman College.