Westyn Branch-Elliman, MD, MMSc Appointed Chief of Infectious Diseases at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System
The UCLA Department of Medicine is pleased to announce that Westyn Branch-Elliman, MD, MMSc was appointed chief of infectious diseases at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System effective Oct. 7. Dr. Branch-Elliman serves as acting director of Health Sciences-AI for the VA National Artificial Intelligence Institute (NAII) in the VHA’s Digital Health Office. She is also the associate editor of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the major journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology in America (SHEA), and is a fellow of both the Infectious Disease Society of America and SHEA.
Prior to joining the Greater Los Angeles VA and the UCLA Department of Medicine, Dr. Branch-Elliman was an infectious diseases physician at the VA Boston Healthcare System; an investigator at the VA Boston Center for Healthcare Organization and Implementation Research; and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. She previously served as medical director of infection control and antimicrobial stewardship at the VA Eastern Colorado Healthcare System.
Dr. Branch-Elliman’s clinical research focuses on infection prevention and antimicrobial stewardship, particularly in surgical and procedural settings, and on implementation of infection prevention strategies in non-inpatient and non-clinical settings. Her funded work leverages implementation science, epidemiology, informatics, and clinical trials to support the rapid translation of evidence-based interventions into practice. Ongoing projects include: 1) the testing of a multifaceted implementation strategy bundle to support de-implementation of ineffective antimicrobial practices in procedural areas, 2) leveraging informatics to assess the sustainability of practice change following discontinuation of active policy support for the intervention, 3) leveraging VA “big data” and clinical informatics to evaluate the impact of infection prevention strategies in VA settings to support the development of risk prediction tools to improve uptake of evidence-based prevention and therapeutic interventions. In her present role at NAII, she is the lead for the pilot evaluation of ambient scribes within the national VA and supports implementation and dissemination of AI and machine-learning based applications in VA clinical care.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Branch-Elliman was the principal investigator for a pragmatic multicenter clinical trial on COVID-19 therapeutics and served as a scientific advisor for the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, supporting their school re-opening efforts. In this role, she supported the implementation and evaluation of the state-wide testing program including the Test-to-Stay Modified Quarantine Program, which is estimated to have saved approximately 1,000,000 in-person learning days for elementary and secondary students across the state. She also collaborated with the state public health department to develop and operationalize state-wide surveillance metrics.
Dr. Branch-Elliman completed a fellowship in infectious diseases at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and completed her residency in internal medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. She holds a master’s degree in clinical research from Harvard Medical School and earned her medical degree from the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine. She attended college at the University of California, Berkeley.
Please join us in welcoming Dr. Branch-Elliman to the UCLA Department of Medicine.
Related Posts
The 2025 fellowship match results are in! I am thrilled to welcome our 2025 UCLA Department of Medicine Subspecialty Fellows, a diverse, brilliantly talented group[...]
The UCLA Department of Medicine is pleased to announce that Proceedings of the UCLA Department of Medicine, the department journal for documenting faculty creativity, is now[...]
Jump To: CARDIOLOGY Omid Amidi, MD Doctor of Medicine:SUNY Downstate College of Medicine, Brooklyn, NY Residency: Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX Fellowship: University of[...]