From the Desk of Dr. Andy
Andrew C. Agwunobi, MD, MBA, Chief Executive Officer, EVP for Health Affairs, UConn Health
Dear Colleagues,
As you may have seen, our 2026 employee engagement survey is underway, and the theme this time is "Progress Happens Together." It's fitting because candid feedback from you goes a long way toward helping my leadership team and me understand what our institution is doing well and what areas have opportunities for improvement.
Like all our employee engagement surveys, a third party is administering it, thus keeping your responses confidential. I invite you to please take a few minutes to thoughtfully respond to the survey questions. You'll find a unique survey link in your email (July 13 from "Press Ganey on behalf of UConn Health"), a QR code on our Take the Survey page on The Hub, and even an Employee Engagement Survey shortcut on our computer's desktop.
You also can take the survey during one of our pop-up events, which feature things like food trucks and music, every Wednesday through the end of the survey period, Aug. 7. Find more information on the pop-ups.
I'd like to thank Alexis Crean and her team in the Office of Professional Well-Being and Engagement for all their work organizing and executing the survey.
As many of you know, I love to visit our employees who are serving the needs of the people of Connecticut every day in such an excellent manner. This week, Caryl Ryan, our CNO and UConn John Dempsey Hospital COO, Carlos Iitsuka, our VP for business development and analytics, and I had the opportunity to round in our emergency department. We had the pleasure of meeting with charge nurse Angelina Cabral, nurse Alexa Zborowski, health unit coordinators Ewa Truszkowski and Christopher Brijmohan, lead transportation aide Francesco Nigro, and educator Shannon Curtis. They are all amazing and gave us their thoughts on what is working well and ways we can further support them. For example, for the emergency department, which is extremely busy, consistent levels of staffing of the triage (intake) area to decrease patient wait times was a theme.
As you likely are aware, parts of the U.S. are seeing an outbreak of a GI infection known as cyclosporiasis, which is caused by a microscopic parasite spread by way of contaminated food or water. The Department of Public Health recently reported 40 confirmed cases in Connecticut, which, while not an alarming number like in Michigan (more than 4,300 cases reported, by far the most in the country), is more than we usually see here in a typical year.
I bring this up because I want to provide some assurance by mentioning a few things:
- We have not seen a significant number of patients presenting in our ED or urgent care centers with symptoms of cyclosporiasis.
- Even if we did, this illness typically is not transmitted person-to-person.
- Most importantly, we have taken a number of steps to ensure we are prepared to handle an influx of such patients: Our infection prevention team just held an education session for the infection prevention liaisons this week. The liaisons are a dynamic team representing each inpatient and outpatient units and clinics who are dedicated to promote the charge of the infection prevention program. They are bringing that information back to their units to disseminate the information to their fellow staff members. Our food and nutrition vendor, Morrison Healthcare, is taking precautions with its food suppliers, such as buying only full heads of lettuce as opposed to bagged lettuce. Our clinical microbiology laboratory has testing available to support clinicians in diagnosing this infection.
I'd like to thank our infection prevention experts, particularly Erica Gomez, emerging infectious diseases coordinator, Kate Falotico and Rachel Crosby, infection prevention specialists, Nancy Dupont, nursing director of epidemiology, and Dr. David Banach, hospital epidemiologist, for their leadership in this area.
