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.
🎆Purple Power: Fighting Antimicrobial Resistance Together
Get ready to go purple! Antimicrobial Awareness Week is November 18–24, 2025, and this year’s theme is “Fighting Antimicrobial Resistance Takes All of Us.” Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) isn’t just a healthcare issue; it’s a One Health challenge that affects people, pets, and our planet. Every reminder, game, or hallway conversation helps keep antibiotics and antifungals working for everyone.
What to Expect:
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – U.S. Antibiotic Awareness Week (USAAW) Find ready-to-use social media posts, fact sheets, and talking points to kickstart awareness activities across your organization.
- World Health Organization – World AMR Awareness Week (WAAW) Grab shareable graphics, infographics, and messages to spotlight the global effort against antimicrobial resistance.
- CDC – What Is One Health? See how the health of people, animals, and the environment are all linked and why your daily actions matter beyond the bedside.
How to Use It:
- Go purple! Ask teams to wear purple or decorate breakrooms to spark conversation.
- Host a mini-moment. Share a quick AMR fact in your next huddle or meeting.
- Make it a game. Use ideas from this month’s Cheers for Peers feature, where Whitney Rice created a microbe-matching challenge about bacterial vs. viral infections.
- Spread the message. Share graphics or stories from the WHO or CDC campaigns on your intranet or social media.
- Recognize Purple Champions. Celebrate strong antimicrobial stewardship by giving a Cheers for Peers certificate.
Target Audience: Foundational 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.
