If you live in the Boston area and watch the local television news, Dr. Shira Doron ’90 is probably a very familiar face and a community resource you rely upon. An attending physician in the Division of Geographic Medicine and Infectious Diseases at Tufts Medical Center, she has been a frequent interviewee since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, sharing clear answers to complex questions, such as the difference between PCR tests and antigen tests, the relative risks and rewards of in-person vs. remote learning for schools, and predictions of what the winter months may bring. “A homemade mask is better than no mask,” she told viewers in the spring, during Boston’s surge of Covid-19 cases, when shortages of personal protective equipment were reaching crisis levels at local hospitals. More recently, she advised viewers that the need for social distancing isn’t going away anytime soon: “I think we might need to be prepared to do it for a long time.”
Shira is Tufts Medical Center’s hospital epidemiologist. For years, it has been her job to make sure that patients, staff, and visitors do not contract infections within the hospital by enacting appropriate interventions related to hand hygiene, environmental disinfection, and utilization of medical devices. Her work also involves surveillance, reporting, and data analysis to recognize changing trends in infection rates and respond accordingly. However, since January her epidemiological work has focused almost entirely on the urgent need of preventing Covid-19 transmission in her hospital.
Shira’s medical career began with graduating from George Washington University’s School of Medicine as her class valedictorian in 1998. She completed an intern year in internal medicine at the University of California, San Diego, and a residency in internal medicine at the George Washington University Hospital. She also did a fellowship in infectious diseases at Tufts Medical Center, where she simultaneously earned a master’s degree in clinical research. Today she is not only the hospital epidemiologist at Tufts, she is the director of antimicrobial stewardship (AMS). AMS programs at hospitals battle the problem of antimicrobial resistance—the fact that microbial pathogens are becoming increasingly resistant to drugs, largely due to overuse of antibiotics throughout the world. In her AMS work, Shira creates protocols, algorithms, and policies that insure the best possible antibiotic treatment for the patients at her hospital. More broadly she is teaching her fellow clinicians, as well as public health officials, how to make better decisions and policies related to antibiotic use.
Though she is a busy physician at the height of her powers, an associate professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine, a wife, and a mom of two teenagers, Shira still finds time for music. Back at Dwight-Englewood Shira began singing in the Jazz Rock band led by Rob DeBellis, and she’s been singing with rock bands ever since. Her current band, Off Label, is mostly made up of doctors like herself. They play at bars, fundraisers, and department parties. They recently played an online mini-concert—along with Yo-Yo Ma and the Boston Pops—in honor of Boston frontline healthcare workers. (See www.noteshope.org “archives” for the concert recording.) Shira also makes time to help her alma mater, serving as a member of a special Covid-19 committee for Dwight-Englewood. As the 2020-21 school year unfolds and progresses, there is no doubt Shira’s expertise will continue be invaluable to our community—and to all of the communities to which she belongs.
