Surgery faculty receives junior faculty fellowship


By Darla Brown, Office of Communications

Dr. Krislynn Mueck - Surgery Infection Society Junior Faculty Clinical Research Fellowship Award
Krislynn Mueck, MD, MS, MPH

Krislynn Mueck, MD, MS, MPH, assistant professor of surgery in the Division of Acute Care Surgery, received the Surgical Infection Society Junior Faculty Clinical Research Fellowship Award in Westlake Village, Calif., during the society’s 42nd annual meeting.

The annual fellowship provides funding to a junior faculty member in a clinical research project that supports the mission of the Surgical Infection Society. Mueck received the award for her project, “The Impact of Health Literacy on Infections after Surgical Treatment (Health LIT) Study.”

Fellowship funding is $35,000 for one year with the opportunity to apply for a competitive renewal to earn a second year of funding.

“The proposed research project is important in that it will help our surgery team to understand the prevalence of poor health literacy in our patient population, to determine if there is any association with not just the incidence but also the timing of diagnosis and severity of post-operative infectious complications, and to develop and evaluate interventions to provide appropriate education for our patients so as to improve outcomes,” said Lillian Kao, MD, director of the Division of Acute Care Surgery, and holder of the Jack H. Mayfield, M.D. Chair in Surgery.

Mueck graduated from The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and completed her residency at McGovern Medical School and a fellowship at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center. She joined the McGovern faculty in August 2022.

The mission of the Surgical Infection Society is to educate health care providers and the public about infection in surgical patients and promote research in the understanding, prevention, and management of surgical infections.