Anna Sick-Samuels, MD, MPH

Dr. Anna Sick-Samuels is an associate professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a pediatric infectious diseases physician at Johns Hopkins Children's Center. She serves as an associate hospital epidemiologist in the Department of Hospital Epidemiology and Infection Control at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and as co-medical director of pediatric infection control.

Dr. Sick-Samuels has joint appointments with the Department of Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and with the Department of Health Policy and Management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

A Baltimore native, Dr. Sick-Samuels earned her undergraduate degree in Microbiology from the University of Maryland, College Park. She received her medical degree and Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins University. She completed her pediatrics residency at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh and her fellowship in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins.

Dr. Sick-Samuels is passionate about collaborating with multidisciplinary teams to develop and implement strategies that improve the quality of care for hospitalized children. Her clinical research focuses on preventing healthcare-associated infections and multidrug-resistant infections. Using epidemiology and implementation science methods, she investigates how diagnostic stewardship can optimize microbiology testing to support accurate infection diagnosis and reduce unnecessary antibiotic prescribing.

Dr. Sick-Samuels is a leader of The BrighT STAR Learning Health Community, a collaborative of pediatric intensive care units across the United States and internationally dedicated to safely reducing unnecessary testing and treatment while delivering high-value care to critically ill children. She contributes to national and international guidelines for infectious disease testing and treatment.

Dr. Sick-Samuels focuses on preventing healthcare-associated infections and diagnostic stewardship to optimize microbiology testing and antibiotic prescribing practices. She leads a multicenter study evaluating impact of clinical decision support to improve respiratory culture practices across 15 hospitals.

• Sick-Samuels AC, Linz M, Bergmann J, Fackler JC, Berenholtz SM, Ralston SL, Hoops K, Dwyer J, Colantuoni E, Milstone AM. Diagnostic Stewardship of Endotracheal Aspirate Cultures in a PICU. Pediatrics. 2021 May;147(5). doi: 10.1542/peds.2020-1634. Epub 2021 Apr 7. PubMed PMID: 33827937; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC8086005.
• Sick-Samuels AC, Booth LD, Milstone AM, Schumacher C, Bergmann J, Stockwell DC. A Novel Comprehensive Algorithm for Evaluation of PICU Patients With New Fever or Instability. Pediatr Crit Care Med. 2023 May 1. doi: 10.1097/PCC.0000000000003256. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 37125808.
• Sick-Samuels AC, Kelly DP, Woods-Hill CZ, Arthur A, Kumar U, Koontz DW, Marsteller JA, Milstone AM; and the BrighT STAR (Testing STewardship for Antibiotic Reduction) Respiratory Consensus Authorship group. Diagnostic Stewardship of Endotracheal Aspirate Cultures in Hospitalized Children With Artificial Airways: Expert Consensus Statements From the BrighT STAR (Testing STewardship for Antibiotic Reduction) Respiratory Collaborative. Pediatr Crit Care Med. 2025 Feb 13. doi: 10.1097/PCC.0000000000003695. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 39945582.
• Fabre V, Davis A, Diekema DJ, Granwehr B, Hayden MK, Lowe CF, Pfeiffer CD, Sick-Samuels AC, Sullivan KV, Van Schooneveld TC, Morgan DJ. Principles of diagnostic stewardship: A practical guide from the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America Diagnostic Stewardship Task Force. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol. 2023 Feb;44(2):178-185. doi: 10.1017/ice.2023.5. PubMed PMID: 36786646.

• American Academic of Pediatrics
• Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society
• Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America
• High Value Practice Academic Alliance
• Infectious Diseases Society of America

• Affiliate Faculty, Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, Johns Hopkins Medicine