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Abstract
The emergence and worldwide dissemination of antibiotic resistant organisms represents a significant threat to global public health. An organism that epitomizes both the urgency and challenges associated with this threat is carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae (CRKP). CRKP was first observed in a clinical case in 1996, in a hospital in North Carolina. Since that time, successful lineages of CRKP have spread across the globe, becoming endemic in healthcare networks in many regions. This increasing prevalence of CRKP poses a great risk to hospitalized patients, as crude mortality rates for CRKP infections can be upwards of 50 percent. Moreover, the threat associated with CRKP continues to escalate, with numerous reports of CRKP that are resistant to even last-line antibiotics, leaving affected patients with limited treatment options.

The lack of effective treatments for CRKP infections places an even greater importance on prevention of CRKP transmission. A major hindrance to CRKP prevention is a lack of understanding of the patient factors and clinical practices that influence the risk of transmission. In this presentation I will discuss both published and ongoing work aimed at analyzing whole genome sequences of CRKP isolates from patients, along with detailed data on clinical exposures and locations to understand the sites and drivers of transmission. Ultimately, we hope this work will help us understand the drivers of CRKP transmission across regional healthcare networks and identify modifiable risk factors that can be targeted to help control the CRKP epidemic.