Member Spotlight: Latania Logan

Latania Logan, MD, MSPH, is Professor of pediatrics and Associate Division Chief, Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Emory University School of Medicine. She earned her medical degree at Wayne State University School of Medicine and her Master of Science in Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. Dr. Logan completed her residency in pediatrics and her pediatric infectious diseases fellowship at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and Northwestern University Freiberg School of Medicine.

Dr. Logan is the PIDS IDWeek Chair, which is part of the overall IDWeek Planning Committee tasked with selecting programming for the conference. In this role, Dr. Logan works with the vice chair and vice chair-elect (roles she served prior to becoming chair) to review all pediatric session and abstract submissions and develop the pediatric sessions for IDWeek.

Why pediatric ID? When I was in medical school, my third-year pediatrics rotation was on the pediatric infectious diseases ward. After my month of ID inpatient service, I wasn’t sure if I loved pediatrics or specifically peds ID. So, during my first week of internship at my new institution, Northwestern, I went to the ID head (Dr. Stan Shulman) and asked what I needed to do if I thought I wanted to be an ID doc. He looked at me and said, “Are you an intern, as in you just started this week?” After we had a good laugh, he directed me to take a few different rotations and those confirmed for me that it was truly ID that was my future career path.

Where have you taken your ID focus? I moved to Emory University and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta in August of 2022. I had to rebuild my research program and my lab completely, including all new grants, personnel, you name it. My research focuses on the clinical and molecular epidemiology of multidrug-resistant (MDR) gram-negative bacteria infections among children and healthy populations. My laboratory seeks to identify community reservoirs of multi-drug resistant Enterobacterales, as infections with these organisms have continued to increase despite aggressive antibiotic stewardship and infection prevention campaigns in healthcare settings. I also had to learn a whole new healthcare system and my new roles within it. My family and I had to learn a new city and state where we have no family. It was a lot but it was the right decision for us.

Additionally, I have been serving on the American Board of Pediatrics Subboard for Pediatric Infectious Diseases for the past six years. I just completed my term in January of this year. In this position, we as the board write the questions for the MOCA-Peds ID and Peds ID certification exams, as well as develop the content outlines, articles and other related materials. The Subboard is an amazing group of peds ID docs who I am so thankful to have met and whom I learned so much from.

Of course, for PIDS, I am currently the IDWeek 2025 Chair. This role is quite time consuming but very rewarding. The IDWeek programming committee is one of the best committees I’ve been a part of. It’s a very diverse group of adult and peds members and I’ve loved getting to know and learn from people that I don’t believe I would ever have had the opportunity to know otherwise.

What is a recent development in peds ID you are working on? We have a couple major FY 2025 grants we are excited to have received from the NIH/NIAID and the EPA. The NIH/NIAID project really emphasizes my research focus, a One Health approach to the understanding community reservoirs of multi-drug resistant (MDR) Enterobacterales and community acquired infections in children and healthy populations. Critical knowledge gaps remain with respect to MDR Enterobacterales transmission dynamics among community reservoirs, the role of human and animal inputs and environmental exposures, and the optimal strategies to interrupt transmission.

Our goal is to identify targeted interventions for reducing exposure to MDR Enterobacterales in children, healthy persons, and the community, thereby decreasing infections, hospital admissions, healthcare costs and community spread of these pathogens.

What do you enjoy most about being a PIDS member? What keeps you renewing your membership? I enjoy the community of pediatric ID providers, which is very diverse in background and interests. I enjoy the PIDS webinars and getting to hear about new clinical, infection prevention, stewardship, education and research advances. I always meet someone new at PIDS gatherings and during conferences and I enjoy being able to catch up with others in person. I love that peds ID involves continuous learning and development, and PIDS is always there to help me discover new paths to further my knowledge base and career goals.