University of Virginia
Department of Internal Medicin
PO Box 800764
Charlottesville
VAUSA
22908-0001
Biographical Sketch: Janine Jagger, M.P.H., Ph.D., is Professor of Medicine at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. She is founder and director of U.Va.'s International Healthcare Worker Safety Center. Dr. Jagger received her master of public health degree from the University of Pittsburgh, and her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. Her early career focused on brain trauma research and motor vehicle safety. Over the last 20 years, Dr. Jagger has focused on reducing healthcare workers' risk of occupational exposure to bloodborne pathogens. In 1988, she and her colleagues published a landmark study in the New England Journal of Medicine identifying device design as the cause of needlestick injuries and laying out design criteria for reducing risk to users. In 1991, Dr. Jagger developed the EPINet (Exposure Prevention Information Network) surveillance system for healthcare facilities to standardize the tracking of needlestick injuries and blood exposures. EPINet is now used in more than 60 countries worldwide. In 1994, Dr. Jagger founded the International Healthcare Worker Safety Center to propagate the findings from the EPINet research network and to accelerate the transition to safety-engineered needle technology. She was awarded a MacArthur fellowship in 2002 in recognition of this groundbreaking work. Dr. Jagger and her colleagues are the inventors of six patented safety needle devices.