Announcing the Winners of the 2020 Global Sepsis Awards
Today, we are incredibly excited to officially announce the winners of the 2020 GSA Awards. While the Global Sepsis Awards, which are kindly sponsored by the Erin Kay Flatley Memorial Foundation, honor outstanding efforts to increase sepsis awareness and raise the quality of sepsis prevention and management, they are even more inspirational in times of COVID-19, given the close link that COVID-19 and sepsis share and the significant burden it has imposed on our time and resources.
Congratulations to all winners of the 2020 GSA Awards:
WINNERS CATEGORY I - GOVERNMENTS AND HEALTHCARE AUTHORITIES
The winner in category I is Queensland Health, the ministerial health department of the Queensland Government in Australia.
Queensland Health and its Queensland Pediatric Sepsis Project (QPSP) have created an inspiring and effective response to tackle sepsis, highlighting their commitment to the WHO sepsis resolution and the Australian Sepsis Network Stopping Sepsis: National Action Plan.
In Queensland, sepsis represents a leading cause of preventable death and persistent harm in children, and rural and remote regions are disproportionally affected. In order to respond effectively to this, Queensland Health conducted a needs analysis and secured funding to scale up their Pediatric Sepsis Pathway. They also provided extensive interventions including;
providing targeted sepsis and AMR education and support,
statewide support system networks for care closer to home,
peer mentoring for families,
tele-health systems,
the first Pediatric Sepsis Clinical Nurse Consultant in Australia,
and the development of the first multi-centre Pediatric Antimicrobial Stewardship (AMS) in sepsis research.
The Jury awarded Queensland Health for their impressive program tackling sepsis in Queensland, creating a global shining example of long-term and sustainable interventions to prevent and respond effectively to sepsis.
WINNERS CATEGORY II - NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS, PATIENT ADVOCATE GROUPS, OR HEALTHCARE PROVIDER GROUPS
The winners in category II are Sepsisfonden and the African Research Collaboration on Sepsis (ARCS).
Sepsisfonden (The Swedish Sepsis Trust) raise funding for research aiming to improve diagnosis and treatment of sepsis, and increase awareness and knowledge about sepsis among the public, policy makers, and medical staff. Sepsisfonden were awarded due to their dedicated and tireless work in increasing awareness around sepsis in Sweden.
The Jury were particularly impressed with many of their initiatives and actions in the past year - but in particular their work focusing on; creating both print and digital national sepsis awareness campaigns throughout Sweden (including this film), setting up of sepsis education school projects and creation of a film and pedagogical material for all science teachers to utilize, participating in cross discipline sepsis project - Combat Sepsis and their World Sepsis Day event with lectures, talks from survivors, and the launch of the Swedish Patient Organization.
The African Research Collaboration on Sepsis is a multinational global health research group established in April 2018. ARCS is funded by the National Institute for Health Research to build sepsis research capacity across Sub-Saharan Africa. Centers of Sepsis Research Excellence have been established in Malawi, Uganda, and Gabon, and they act as the central hubs for research activities in twelve African countries.
ARCS was awarded the GSA Award due to their network making outstanding contribution to sepsis research and capacity building across Sub-Saharan Africa. ARCS has and continues to build sustainable partnerships between research and clinical organizations, ministries of health, non-government organizations, and the commercial sector. Their sepsis incidence survey data from ten countries has meant they can begin to accurately quantify the true sepsis burden and enact evidence based policy change. Government ministries in Uganda and Malawi are now listening thanks to their work, and change is on the horizon.
WINNERS CATEGORY III - INDIVIDUAL NOMINEES
The winners in category III are James Karugaba from Uganda and David Carlbom from the United States.
James Karugba works as the head of nursing at Holy Innocents Children’s Hospital in Uganda. The most prominent health issues in Uganda are respiratory tract infections, malaria, and diarrheal diseases, and neonatal sepsis - due to limited knowledge and finances, most patients resort to traditional healers and only appear in the hospital when they are in a critical condition.
The Jury awarded James Karugba with the GSA Award for his dedicated commitment to leading infection prevention and a control committee in the hospital, and creating necessary outreaches to villages to ensure communities are receiving support and education. In particular, his work trying to combat sepsis through creating effective prevention and treatment was very impressive.
James has successfully influenced several policies at Holy Innocents Hospital with regard to sepsis management, including setting up a new policy that all patients be given their first short of antibiotics from the outpatient department before being transferred to the ward - improving the patient outcomes drastically and helping to reduce mortality in the hospital.
David Carlbom works at the Harborview Medical Center in Seattle in the United States. He was nominated and chosen for the GSA Award for his many years of dedication to building a robust sepsis program at Harborview, including a high-functioning multi-disciplinary sepsis committee, innovative screening systems for sepsis to help providers recognize sepsis early, multiple educational and performance improvement programs around sepsis, and an annual sepsis conference. The Jury was particularly impressed with his achievements of the growth and reach of the Pacific Northwest Sepsis Conference - which began simply as a small internal workshop at Harborview but then expanded to nurses and providers in Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montano. In 2019, the in-person two-day conference hosted more than 400 attendees from around the world. Attendees included physicians, nurses, pharmacists, respiratory therapists, quality improvement professionals, students, and sepsis survivors.
With the COVID-19 pandemic, the in-person conference for 2020 had to be cancelled. Dr. Carlbom was not deterred and despite a brutal clinical schedule in the COVID and other ICUs this spring, he continued to volunteer his time to build and produce a free virtual sepsis conference that was a huge success. The conference had more than 1800 people register for the live event on June 16, 2020, but the content was recorded and is provided free of charge on an ongoing basis so it has the potential to reach thousands of other people.
Commendations
In addition to the 2020 GSA Award Winners above, the following organizations and individuals who have applied or have been nominated for the 2020 GSA Awards were honored by the GSA Award Jury for their excellent activities with a Certificate of Commendation:
Kristina Rudd for her invaluable contribution to the assessment of the global burden of sepsis, with particular emphasis on her contributions to the ‘Global Burden of Sepsis’ Report in The Lancet earlier in 2020.
Imran Ismail, Governor of Sindh, Pakistan for his commitment to improving sepsis awareness, early recognition, prevention, care and research in Pakistan. We hope the honorable governor Imran Ismail continues to prioritize sepsis through the Karachi Sepsis Declaration and the WHA Resolution on Sepsis.
Over the coming months, we will give both the 2020 GSA Award Winners as well as the activities and initiatives by the entities that were commended the possibility to share their projects and initiatives in more detail on our websites.
We would like to once again applaud all activities in the fight against sepsis and encourage others to become involved in raising awareness of sepsis – congratulations again to all 2020 GSA Award Winners.
All awardees will receive their trophy and certificate at an upcoming international congress, in a COVID-safe manner, naturally. Winners in category II and III will receive $2,500 prize money each. A huge thanks to everybody who applied.
About the GSA Awards
The Global Sepsis Awards, which are sponsored by the Erin Kay Flatley Memorial Foundation, honor outstanding efforts to increase sepsis awareness and raise the quality of sepsis prevention and management. The awards are granted in three categories, namely governments and healthcare authorities, non-governmental organizations, patient advocate or healthcare provider groups, and individuals, consistent with the aims of the World Sepsis Declaration and the World Sepsis Day Movement.
Applications and nominations for the 2021 GSA Awards open in January 2021 and close on March 31st, 2021.