Julia De Georgeo – GWS Student Spotlight

Julia is a junior majoring in Gender and Women’s Studies and Health Promotion and Health Equity. In the last year, Julia worked with a team of physicians, health care and organization development experts to create and implement a COVID-19 hospital safety strategy. The mitigation approach they developed involved novel safety practices put in place in an initial 20 hospitals in the United States, and many more since. Julia’s work resulted in an article “Using Research-to-Practice Adaptation to Take on COVID-19 Mitigation: Deploying HRD-related Strategies in US Hospitals,” published in the Journal of Microbiology, Immunology and Infection, recently republished online by the Institutes of Public Health.

Julia De Georgeo posing next to a white board filled with aqua sticky notes.Julia’s contributions to these research-to-practice efforts led to significantly safer hospitals for patients and healthcare workers–as measured by far fewer positive COVID-19 tests and related illnesses as compared to hospitals who did not adapt the customized, unique, and collaboratively designed hospital mitigation strategy. Julia presented the team authored research at the 2021 Academy of Human Resource Development Conference and received the Human Resource Development Cutting Edge Award.

Dr. Toby Egan, a University of Maryland associate professor remarked, “I cannot think of a more exemplary action by a university undergraduate. Not only did Julia volunteer to contribute meaningfully to a critical COVID-19 hospital safety practice, she co-authored an article in a respected medical journal and presented an award winning conference paper. There are a number of doctoral students and even professors who aspire to such success.”

Join us in congratulating Julia on the completion of this important work.