Dr. Loren Miller to Receive 2024 Top Ten Clinical Research Achievement Award

The Top 10 Clinical Research Achievement Awards honor groundbreaking achievements in clinical research nationwide. The award recognizes the Protect Trial, a clinical trial jointly led by Dr. Miller and senior investigator Susan Huang, MD, MPH, Chancellor’s Professor at the University of California, Irvine. The Protect Trial involved nearly 14,000 residents in 28 California nursing homes in Los Angeles and Orange counties. The trial found that using chlorhexidine antiseptic soap for all bathing and showering and using an over-the-counter antiseptic to clean the nose prevented nearly two hospitalizations due to infection per month for a typical 100-bed nursing home. It also dramatically reduced antibiotic-resistant pathogens in nursing homes assigned to this strategy. The work is being hailed as a scientific advancement due to the strong protective benefits for nursing home residents stemming from an innovative application of antiseptic products used in healthcare for more than 60 years. Dr. Miller will accept the award on behalf of the entire Protect Trial investigative team. 

Winners were selected by a CR Forum panel from clinical research studies published in peer-reviewed journals in 2023 based on the degree of innovation and novelty involved in advancing science, contribution to understanding human disease and/or physiology, and potential impact upon the diagnosis, prevention, and/or treatment of disease. The Protect Trial was funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, one of twelve agencies within the United States Department of Health and Human Services, and published in October 2023 in the New England Journal of Medicine. The decolonization protocols and educational materials used in the trial are available here.

“I am pleased to congratulate Dr. Loren Miller on receiving this prestigious award from the Clinical Research Forum,” said Dr. Marianne Gausche-Hill, Interim President and CEO of The Lundquist Institute. “This award reinforces that our work here at the Institute is impactful and reflects our researchers' high regard in the science community. I also congratulate Dr. Susan Huang at UC Irvine, Loren’s co-investigator on this influential research project, on preventing nursing home infections from antibiotic-resistant organisms.”

“The Top 10 Clinical Research Achievement Awards honor and celebrate the innovation, tireless efforts and profound contributions that clinical researchers and advocates have made on the health and wellness of humanity,” said Harry P. Selker, MD, MSPH, Chair of the Clinical Research Forum and Dean, Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute at Tufts University. “We congratulate the 2024 awardees for their outstanding efforts.”

During the annual Translational Science Conference, the Top 10 Clinical Research Achievement Awards will be presented at the Paris Las Vegas on April 2, 2024. For more information, please visit www.clinicalresearchforum.org.