Sepsis Linked to Nearly 1 in 5 Pediatric Hospital Deaths in the U.S.
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 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 dual-boarded 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 expertise and contributions to the epidemiology, surveillance, diagnosis, and management of sepsis. His broader interests encompass infection prevention and control, antibiotic resistance and stewardship, and infections in critically ill and immunocompromised patients. He conducts clinical and epidemiologic research with a particular focus on harnessing electronic health record data to generate insights that advance clinical practice, public health strategy, and healthcare policy. His work produced the most comprehensive estimates of the national burden of sepsis and led to the development of CDC’s Adult Sepsis Event surveillance strategy that is now widely used to track sepsis incidence and outcomes and drive improvements in care. He has been a leader in sepsis quality improvement efforts within the Mass General Brigham healthcare system and has served on several national committees focused on enhancing sepsis care and outcomes, including in his current role as Chair of the Infectious Diseases Society of America’s Sepsis Advisory Panel.
Dr. Rhee is an Associate Editor for Clinical Infectious Diseases, a member of the editorial boards of Critical Care Medicine and Critical Care Explorations, 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 served as principal or lead investigator on multiple federally funded grants, has published over 200 articles and book chapters, and is recognized by ScholarGPS as one of the world’s leading sepsis researchers.
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.
