Hilary Babcock

Hilary M. Babcock, MD, MPH, FIDSA, FSHEA, is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. In her Medicine faculty role, she specializes in infectious diseases. She is Vice President and Chief Quality Officer at BJC HealthCare, responsible for quality programs, patient safety, infection prevention, and occupational health. She also serves as medical director of the Infection Prevention and Epidemiology Consortium and Occupational Infection Prevention for BJC HealthCare. Babcock received her BA from Brown University in 1989, MD from University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in 1994, completed internal medicine residency in 1997, chief residency in 1999, and infectious diseases fellowship in 2002 at Barnes-Jewish Hospital/Washington University School of Medicine, and earned her MPH from Saint Louis University School of Public Health in 2006. She is board-certified in internal medicine and infectious diseases.

Her research interests include prevention of infection transmission in healthcare settings, particularly respiratory viral infections, healthcare worker and patient risks for infections, and studies of aerosol generation and pathogen transmission risks in collaboration with engineering partners. She attends on the bone and joint/orthopedic infection inpatient consult service. Babcock is a Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (FIDSA) and the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (FSHEA), serving as SHEA president in 2019. She co-chairs the CDC’s Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC), having joined in 2013, and is a member of IDSA’s Inclusion, Diversity, Access and Equity Task Force, the American Medical Women’s Association faculty advisory board, and the Forum for Women in Medicine Steering Committee. As a CDC-funded investigator, she has authored key publications such as “Characterization of Aerosols Generated During Patient Care Activities” (Clinical Infectious Diseases, 2017), and MMWR reports on COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness among healthcare personnel (2021). She mentors students, residents, fellows, and junior faculty in infection prevention, occupational health, clinical research, and orthopedic infections, contributing significantly to the field of medicine through her leadership and research impact.

Professional Email: hbabcock@wustl.edu