What do therapy dogs and data-driven strategies have in common? They’re both helping to move the needle on patient safety. In this APIC 2025 Annual Conference recap, hosts Kelly Holmes and Lerenza Howard spotlight two infection prevention pros. Maria Vacca shares how her hospital centralized high-level disinfection to boost safety and efficiency. Later in the episode, Rachel Hyatt unveils a heartwarming initiative that taps into the charm of therapy dogs to revolutionize hand hygiene compliance.

Hosted by:

Kelly Holmes, MS, CIC, FAPIC and Lerenza L. Howard, MHA, CIC, LSSGB

About our Guests

Maria Vacca

Maria earned her BSN and Masters of Science in Nursing from Drexel University, graduating Summa cum Laude for both degrees. She began her nursing career in Critical Care and transitioned to the Infection Control Department in 2004 when Infection Prevention and Control quickly became her passion.

Over the course of her career, she’s had the opportunity to provide oversight and obtain experience in numerous Infection Control roles including High Level Disinfection and Sterilization, Infection Prevention oversight of Ambulatory Practices and Regulatory Compliance Coordinator. Maria’s Lean Six Sigma training helped her lead numerous successful performance improvement projects for which her teams have won several awards, presentations and publications.

She was the principle investigator for a Covid-19 research study that was published in the June 2022 issue of AJIC. Maria received recognition as a APIC Fellow (FAPIC) in 2022. Maria and colleagues successfully submitted a poster presentation to APIC’s 2025 Annual conference titled “From Decentralized to Centralized: Successfully Transforming High-Level Disinfection Practices in the Operating Room of a Large Academic Hospital.”

“We realized we needed to do something during our infection control rounds… different teams in the three areas were reprocessing things in different ways.”

Maria Vacca

Rachel Hyatt

Rachel Hyatt is a Community Health Specialist with a Masters in Business Administration. She driven by a passion for innovation and process improvement.

As an Administrative Assistant with Infection Prevention for over two years, Rachel coordinated large-scale initiatives, from accreditation surveys to system-wide health campaigns. Her diverse experience in customer service, animal control, and zookeeping has given her a unique lens on behavior, shaping her approach to public education and engagement.

Her ability to merge strategic planning with creativity fuels her mission to develop engaging, effective solutions in healthcare and community wellness. She is passionate about leveraging innovative ideas and interactive outreach to inspire lasting, positive change.

Rachel successfully submitted an oral abstract presentation to APIC’s 2025 Annual conference titled “Wash Your Paws: Using Creative Canine Marketing and Therapy Dogs to Promote Hand Hygiene Compliance”.

“Hand hygiene can be a difficult topic to make interesting… by incorporating something people already loved—dogs—we reimagined what hand hygiene education could look like.”

Rachel Hyatt