Deborah Yokoe

Deborah Yokoe, MD, MPH, is a Clinical Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine. She serves as the Medical Director for Hospital Epidemiology and Infection Prevention for adult services and an attending physician on the Transplant Infectious Diseases consultation service. Her roles include co-chairing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC) and serving as President of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) in 2023. Her research focuses on healthcare-associated infection surveillance, including surgical site infections and statistical methods for outbreak detection.

Education: Dr. Yokoe earned her B.S. from Stanford University (1981), M.D. from UCSF (1985), M.P.H. in Epidemiology from the University of Pittsburgh (1991), and completed a joint Infectious Disease Fellowship at Harvard (1994).

Research interests span infection prevention strategies, healthcare epidemiology, and antimicrobial stewardship. Her publications emphasize streamlined infection surveillance, outbreak detection systems, and evidence-based guidelines for preventing healthcare-associated infections. Recent work addresses SARS-CoV-2 transmission, MRSA prevention, and antibiotic resistance.

Her contributions include leadership in national committees shaping infection control policies and advancing methods for hospital-acquired infection tracking. She collaborates with the CDC’s Prevention Epicenters program and has pioneered automated surveillance tools to enhance outbreak detection.