Healthcare providers celebrating. Image sourced from Canva.

Your Infection Prevention Week Game Plan Starts Here

International Infection Prevention Week (IIPW) is October 19–25! It is a great time to celebrate the people who make infection prevention happen. Get your team in the game with activities that build skills, raise awareness, and keep others safe.

What to Expect:

International Infection Prevention Week: Start with the official IIPW site. Be on the lookout for resources for this year’s theme, Generations of Infection Prevention: PAST. PRESENT. PROTECTED.

VIPTA Resource Library: Build your game plan with resources for each daily focus. Monday covers sterile processing, TB, and outbreaks. Tuesday focuses on hand hygiene. Wednesday covers vaccines and antibiotics. Thursday focuses on environment of care. Finish the week on Friday with technology.

VDH Infection Prevention Training Power Tools: Add some fun with ready-to-use puzzles, coloring pages, games, and step-by-step training guides.

Create your own: Make a custom puzzle or Wordle using key words from your IIPW activities.

How to use it:

Make a daily play: Pick one resource for each day. Send it to unit leaders with a few discussion points or trivia questions to share with staff. (Hack: A Project Firstline Micro-Learn is ready to go if you don’t want to make something new.)
Set up a game station: Put puzzles, coloring pages, or trivia in a break room or staff area. Add a prize drawing to boost play.
Cheer on your team: Use Cheers for Peers certificates to thank staff for great infection prevention work. Or, create an IIPW Kudos Wall where staff can leave notes or shout outs to celebrate each other.

Target Audience: Foundational & Intermediate IPC Education Level

Guidance, Recommendations, & Regulatory Updates

VIPTA members track guidance and regulation resources to share source documents that guide infection prevention and control practices for public health staff and clinical and non-clinical healthcare personnel.

The date of the regulation or guidance update is included in each post. Please check linked content to be sure it is the most up to date and recommended practice.

CDC: Conjunctivitis (09/11/2026)

CDC

Any Practice Setting

The CDC recommends excluding healthcare personnel with suspected or confirmed infectious conjunctivitis, including epidemic keratoconjunctivitis (EKC), from work for the duration of their symptoms. These recommendations emphasize strict hand hygiene, appropriate cleaning and disinfection of surfaces and shared medical equipment, and prompt identification and management of cases to prevent transmission and healthcare-associated outbreaks.

CDC: Viral Respiratory Infections (09/11/2026)

CDC

Any Practice Setting

The CDC provides updated recommendations for managing healthcare personnel exposed to or infected with viral respiratory infections, including work restrictions, symptom monitoring, and source control. Asymptomatic exposed personnel may continue working with source control through at least five days after their last exposure, while infected personnel should be excluded from work for at least three days and meet additional symptom-based return-to-work criteria, followed by source control through at least day seven.

CDC: Preventing Respiratory Infections in the Workplace (08/28/2026)

CDC

Any Practice Setting

The CDC provides recommendations to help employers prevent and respond to respiratory infections in the workplace through improved ventilation, engineering controls, environmental cleaning and disinfection, and policies that encourage sick employees to stay home. These recommendations also emphasize using respiratory illness surveillance data to inform workplace prevention strategies, including masking and remote work, to reduce transmission and protect employee health.

Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA)

August 10, 2026 August 12, 2026 SHEA

Infection Prevention and Control of Candida auris in Pediatric Settings (6/23/2026) The guidance recommends identifying at-risk pediatric patients through targeted screening, using appropriate isolation and room-placement precautions, and coordinating closely with infection prevention and public health partners when Candida auris is suspected or confirmed. It also emphasizes prevention through meticulous hand hygiene, effective environmental cleaning and disinfection, and careful...

Bug of the Month

The infection prevention team at Ballad Health continually seeks new and creative ways to educate more than 13,500 team members across 20 hospitals on important infection prevention topics. Supporting this effort is Krista Hess, an infection preventionist at Russell County Hospital in southwest Virginia, who leads the Bug of the Month Committee.

With full creative control, the committee develops a one-page educational flyer each month that is shared by leaders, highlighted during huddles, and featured in internal communication, such as Ballad Health News. Now celebrating its two-year anniversary, Bug of the Month continues to gain momentum. October’s “Say Boo to the Flu” achieved the highest engagement yet.

Over the past two years, the Bug of the Month Committee has spotlighted topics such as C. difficile, Candida auris, hand hygiene, and environmental cleaning. Congratulations to Krista Hess and the entire Ballad Health team for championing innovative approaches that keep team members informed on vital infection prevention topics!