The Healthcare Surfaces Summit, the industry’s leading nonprofit focused on the prevention of the spread of pathogens via surfaces, announced today the appointment of several new board members and staff positions.

“One of the most important things the Healthcare Surfaces Summit has focused on since it was founded was to build bridges between silos of expertise in our field, and as we continue to do this, we have made some exciting additions to our leadership team,” said Linda Lybert, Healthcare Surfaces Summit’s founder, immediate past president, and new executive director. We are excited about the new additions and changes that will strengthen the Summit’s ability to validate and take innovation to scale, improving patient outcomes, reducing the risk to patients and healthcare workers and increasing our impact on the industry.”

Darrel Hicks, owner and principal of Darrel Hicks, LLC., will serve as board president. With over 36 years of health care experience in environmental services and infection control, Hicks is a nationally recognized expert and brings a passion for education, training and personal recognition of all environmental services professionals. In addition to training and serving as a consultant to healthcare leaders and building service contractors, he has written and published numerous articles in professional and health care related journals, and his book Infection Prevention for Dummies. Before founding his consulting firm, Hicks served as an environmental services director of a 500-bed hospital for over 16 years.

Debra Harris, Ph.D., has joined the board of directors for her first term. An award-winning researcher on facility design and organizational effectiveness, Harris holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture from Texas A&M University, with an emphasis on health systems planning and policy. She is a fellow of the Center for Health Systems & Design at Texas A&M and has written over 40 peer-reviewed and trade publications and books. She is an Associate Professor at Baylor University in the Robbins College of Health and Human Sciences where her research focuses on material science and the built environment, in particular healthcare environments, related to the mitigation of healthcare associated illness. As CEO of RAD Consultants, based out of Waco, Texas, Debra specializes in providing research and strategic planning services to the healthcare, education, manufacturing, and government sectors.

Linda Lybert, founder, and immediate past president of the Healthcare Surfaces Summit has been appointed by the board of directors to serve as its executive director. Lybert started the organization in 2015 with the goal of gathering multi-disciplinary experts and thought leaders to create a neutral platform to evaluate the critical surfaces issue.  This problem is complex with no simple single solution.  She believes that bringing all experts and thought leaders together to look at the issue from a holistic and scientific perspective to find multi-modal solutions that work together as a system. Outside of the Healthcare Surfaces Summit, Lybert is the president and owner of Healthcare Surface Consulting.

Joining the Summit’s Advisory Board is Mary Millard, M. Ed.  Millard is a survivor of acute septic shock and lives with Pseudomonas Aeruginosa residing in biofilm, a hospital-acquired infection she contracted during open heart surgery.  She now speaks to congressional panels, hospitals, infection preventionists, and other groups about sepsis awareness and those living with the resulting chronic infections, and the extreme financial costs for individuals and healthcare facilities.

Julie Benjamin joins the organization as its administrative assistant, with the responsibility of organizing and implementing the operational activities of the Healthcare Surfaces Summit.  Julie has 20 years of office administration and management experience, with the last seven years exclusively in the business offices of healthcare facilities. She also is the executive administrative assistant at Healthcare Surface Consulting.

The 2018 Healthcare Surfaces Summit will take place Tuesday, August 21 to Wednesday, August 22, at the newly renovated Renaissance Minneapolis Bloomington in Bloomington, Minn. Interested attendees and sponsors can learn more about the 2018 program at www.healthcaresurfacessummit.org.