Dr. Sandora conducts epidemiologic and clinical research, having obtained a Masters in Public Health degree from Harvard in 2004. His particular areas of interest include hospital epidemiology, infection control, and hand hygiene. He also conducts research in medical education.

Gastrointestinal (GI) and respiratory tract infections are common among children attending out-of-home childcare, and these infections are often transmitted to family members in the home. Dr. Sandora was the principal investigator for the Healthy Hands Healthy Families study, which was the first randomized controlled trial to demonstrate that alcohol-based hand sanitizers (as part of a multifactorial hand hygiene intervention) can reduce illness transmission in the homes of families who have children enrolled in childcare programs. He also conducted a clinical trial demonstrating that a school-based disinfection and hand hygiene intervention can reduce absenteeism from gastrointestinal illness among elementary school students.

Dr. Sandora also conducts research about preventing infections in the hospital. He has been involved in implementing and studying a systematic way to reduce central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLA-BSI) in a pediatric cardiac intensive care unit, as well as investigating risk factors for these infections. He is currently working on the development of a prediction rule for CLA-BSI in pediatric intensive care unit patients to help identify high-risk children who might benefit from further interventions to prevent infections.

Dr. Sandora?s research interests also include community-acquired pneumonia (CAP), a common pediatric infection for which management is highly variable. National measures to assess the quality of care for pediatric patients with pneumonia are lacking. He completed a study to assess the applicability of quality indicators that are recommended for adults with CAP, such as choice of antibiotic and time to antibiotic administration, and found that these indicators are often not achieved in children and are not always applicable because of differences between adult and pediatric patients.

Finally, in his role as the assistant program director for the Boston Combined Residency in Pediatrics, Dr. Sandora mentors residents and conducts medical education research. Past projects include a national survey of pediatric program directors regarding procedural training, and the creation and assessment of a procedural skills curriculum for pediatric residents and for medical students. He will next study the impact of a clinical journal club on the acquisition of critical appraisal skills by residents.