Dr. Gohil is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at UC Irvine School of Medicine and Associate Medical Director of Epidemiology & Infection Prevention. She earned her Medical Doctorate from Tufts University, School of Medicine, completed her residency in Internal Medicine at UC Davis, and a Clinical and Research Fellowship in Infectious Diseases at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine in New York City. In her current administrative role, she is leading UCI Health’s response to the COVID pandemic, including clinical and epidemiologic assessment of healthcare worker and patient management, COVID testing, exposure definition and response, contact tracing, infection prevention strategies to limit spread (e.g., PPE management, environmental handling and cleaning), and vaccination.
Dr. Gohil’s primary research priorities are dedicated to understanding what places individuals and populations at risk for infectious diseases and how to mitigate this risk at the earliest opportunity using applied epidemiology and patient-oriented outcomes research to develop innovative ways to evaluate, detect, and intervene in the acquisition and spread of healthcare-associated infections along the continuum of care. Specifically, Dr. Gohil’s has led state-wide population studies using large administrative datasets to examine modifiable risk factors associated with infection-related readmissions and sepsis. She is also the lead investigator of four separate CDC and NIH funded national cluster-randomized control trials (INSPIRE-ASP Trials: Pneumonia, UTI, Abdominal, and Skin/Soft Tissue Infections) that include modeling absolute patient risk for multi-drug resistant bacterial infections and creating real-time physician smart prompts to limit use of extended spectrum antibacterials. If successful, these trials will help change paradigms on appropriate antibiotic use in hospitalized patients.
Her research portfolio also includes a focus on device-associated infections across healthcare settings with an emphasis on the use of novel strategies to recognize and respond to infection prevention opportunities as early and swiftly as possible. She developed a novel scoring system (CLISA score, Central Line Insertion Site Assessment) to standardize the medical assessment of central lines and link nursing findings of high risk lines to physician action. This effort successfully linked preventive thinking to clinical response and dramatically reduced infection risk at participating facilities. Dr. Gohil also created the SAFER Lines mobile app that enables high-fidelity nursing photo-documentation, remote physician exam, and within-app ordering to respond to high risk central lines, which expanded the CLISA score from use in the hospital setting to post-discharge settings (cancer clinics and nursing homes). This telemedicine approach provides a novel strategy for infection prevention that emphasizes and promotes proactive processes for early detection of the pre-infection state and timely preventative response – a model with broad applicability to other infection syndromes.