VIPTA is a statewide infection prevention and control education collaborative, led by the Virginia Healthcare-Associated Infections Advisory Group. Through partnership, VIPTA curates IPC resources for Virginia’s healthcare, congregate care, and public health settings.
🎆Let’s Throw an Infection Prevention Party!
International Infection Prevention Week (IIPW) is October 19–25 and a great reason to have a party! A simple way to add flare to your celebration is with the brand-new Cheers for Peers certificate. It’s a ready-to-use tool that makes it easy to spotlight the everyday wins that keep patients, residents, and staff safe. You can hand one out during a huddle, post it on a breakroom bulletin board, or make it part of a bigger party.
Free Tools to Bring the Fun: The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) makes it easy to host your own celebration. The IIPW toolkit offers:
- Fun graphics and posters to brighten up your space.
- Ready-to-use PowerPoint slides to add flair to your next huddle or staff meeting.
- Promotional videos and infographics that spark conversation.
- Daily themes and games to keep the energy high all week long.
Explore and download resources at: Infection Prevention and You.
Party Ideas for Your Team
- Kick off the week by surprising a unit with balloons, snacks, and a quick game.
- Hand out Cheers for Peers certificates to celebrate a champion of healthcare infection prevention, an infection-free milestone, great hand hygiene audits, or a colleague who consistently models best practices.
Puzzle It Out! Want to add an extra layer of fun? Create your own infection prevention puzzles for staff to solve using a free site like Puzzel.org. Imagine sending someone a crossword or jigsaw puzzle that, when solved, reveals: “You won a Cheers for Peers award!”
Why It Matters: Celebrating infection prevention wins is more than just fun — it can boost morale and remind your team that every effort counts. As we head into the busy fall respiratory season, a little joy goes a long way in keeping spirits high.
So, gather your balloons, download your graphics, and throw an infection prevention party this IIPW. And don’t forget to share your celebrations with VIPTA, we’d love to cheer alongside you!
Target Audience: Essential IPC Education Level
LeadingAge Virginia
Meet Emily Varvil, Project Manager at LeadingAge Virginia, an association of not-for-profit aging services serving older Virginians across the aging services continuum. She is passionate about empowering adult day centers (ADCs) in Virginia with infection prevention knowledge and resources. Over the last 2 years, LeadingAge Virginia has worked on the creation and implementation of infection prevention template policies for Virginia’s ADCs. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, these centers were largely without formal written IP policies. However, LeadingAge Virginia realized during the pandemic that as participants socialize in close contact with one another, more thorough IP policies were needed.
Emily and her team have set up a website of grant-developed infection prevention and control (IPC) resources and orchestrated three regional half-day workshops for ADC leaders across the state (Williamsburg, Arlington, and Roanoke). During the IPC workshops, Emily reviews the resources available to the ADCs, provides at-home infection prevention resources for ADC participants (see links below), and includes presentations from Health Quality Innovators about antimicrobial stewardship and Virginia Department of Health about infection prevention education and adult learning principles. They also discuss other available IPC resources from VIPTA and the Virginia Infection Prevention Training Center (VIPTC).
All of the grant-developed resources will continue to be available online when the grant funding ends in July 2024 to help centers keep their great infection prevention work going.
LeadingAge Virginia webpage containing the grant-developed IPC resources: https://leadingagevirginia.org/page/AdultDayIPC
“At home” resources for participants and their caregivers: https://leadingagevirginia.org/page/ADCIPC_AtHome
The workshops for ADCs are being funded by the Adult Day Center Model Infection Control and Prevention Policies grant. This grant was awarded to LeadingAge Virginia in 2022 by the Virginia Department of Health Office of Epidemiology, funded by the CDC under Federal Award Identification Number NU50CK00055.
