A Banner Month for Institute Recognition
Chanu Rhee, MD, MPH
Associate Professor
Director, SEPSIS Center
Director, SEPSIS Center
email
[email protected]
assistant
Gianna Medeiros
Primary Divisions and Centers
Affiliated Divisons and Centers
Research Focus
Research Areas:
AI/Health Informatics, Health Policy, Infectious Disease, Prevention, Public Health
Chanu Rhee, MD, MPH, is an Associate Professor of Population Medicine and Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Center for Sepsis Epidemiology and Prevention Studies (SEPSIS) at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute. He is also a practicing infectious disease and critical care physician and Medical Director of Infection Control at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Dr. Rhee is internationally recognized for his contributions to sepsis epidemiology, surveillance, quality measurement, and management. His clinical and academic interests also encompass infection prevention and control, critical care medicine, infections in immunocompromised patients, and antimicrobial stewardship. At the SEPSIS Center, he leads a CDC-, AHRQ-, and NIH-funded research program that uses large-scale electronic health record data to inform clinical practice, public health, and health care policy. His research has generated foundational insights into sepsis epidemiology, produced the first comprehensive national estimates of sepsis burden using clinical data, and helped establish the CDC's Adult Sepsis Event surveillance framework, which is now widely used to track sepsis incidence and outcomes. He has also helped shape sepsis quality improvement efforts across Mass General Brigham and served as Chair of the Infectious Diseases Society of America's Sepsis Advisory Panel, where he led multisociety efforts to develop priorities and strategies for hospital sepsis care.
Dr. Rhee is an Associate Editor of Clinical Infectious Diseases, a member of the editorial board of Critical Care Medicine, and a Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, and the American College of Critical Care Medicine. He has authored more than 200 scientific publications and mentored more than two dozen trainees and junior faculty.
Featured Publications
Featured Key Publication
National Estimates of Pediatric Sepsis in US Hospitals Using Clinical Data
How common is pediatric sepsis, and how reliably can it be measured?
How We Studied It
Led by Chanu Rhee and collaborators at the SEPSIS Center, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Nemours Children’s Health Delaware, this study developed and validated the Pediatric Sepsis Event (PSE) definition, an EHR-based surveillance framework that adapts the Phoenix clinical criteria and aligns with the CDC’s Adult Sepsis Event approach. The team applied PSE to more than 3.9 million pediatric hospitalizations across hundreds of hospitals and health systems to generate the first standardized national estimates using clinical data.
Approximately 1 in 75 pediatric hospitalizations in the U.S. involve sepsis, and more than 1 in 10 affected children do not survive their hospital stay. Sepsis is involved in nearly 1 in 5 pediatric hospital deaths. Across the U.S., this translates to more than 18,000 pediatric sepsis cases and over 1,800 deaths each year. Notably, incidence and mortality rates remained largely unchanged from 2016 to 2022. The PSE approach demonstrated strong performance compared with clinician-adjudicated sepsis and outperformed billing code–based methods.
Why It Matters
These findings demonstrate that pediatric sepsis remains a major and persistent cause of childhood mortality. They also establish a standardized surveillance framework that can help guide efforts to improve prevention, care, and policy.
