Team Biographies

Kavita Bhavan, M.D., M.H.S., is an Associate Professor in the Departamento de Medicina Interna en el UT Southwestern Medical Center y es miembro de su División de Enfermedades Infecciosas y Medicina Geográfica, además de desempeñarse como Director de Innovación del Parkland Health & Hospital System.

La Dra. Bhavan obtuvo su título de médico en la Facultad de Medicina de la Pennsylvania State University. Completó su residencia en medicina interna en la Ochsner Clinic Foundation y recibió formación avanzada en enfermedades infecciosas a través de una beca en la Washington University/Barnes-Jewish Hospital. También posee una Maestría en Ciencias de la Salud en salud materno-infantil de la Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.  She joined the UT Southwestern faculty in 2009.

Dr. Bhavan’s research interests include reducing health disparities with a low-tech and low-cost patient-centered approach to innovation in care delivery, patient engagement, and self-care models. She developed a self-care program for uninsured patients discharged from Parkland Memorial Hospital’s safety net setting to self-administer outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy (S-OPAT) for the treatment of a variety of infections. In this model, patients from a low-literacy or low-socioeconomic status population are taught to self-administer their intravenous (IV) antibiotics by gravity or IV push at home. Published data demonstrate efficacy with 47% lower 30-day readmission rates among patients in the self-care model compared to patients discharged with standard forms of OPAT. To date, more than 5,000 patients have been discharged to this program with significant improvement in resource utilization and patient satisfaction.

Her current research efforts include exploring other clinical settings for self-care models to improve health equity.

She is also focused on community-engaged initiatives to improve influenza vaccine uptake in vulnerable populations, and she is currently the principal investigator for the Dallas study site on a multicenter National Institutes of Health RAD- X UP study with the University of Chicago to improve COVID-19 testing among vulnerable populations.

Dr. Bhavan also serves as the Medical Director of the Outpatient Parenteral Antimicrobial Therapy Clinic and Infectious Diseases Ambulatory Clinics at Parkland Health & Hospital System. Since 2014, she has been an expert panel member on the IDSA Clinical Practice Guidelines for Outpatient Parenteral Antimicrobial Therapy for the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

She is a Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and a member of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine.

She has delivered countless invited lectures, published numerous academic articles, and contributed to the book Critical Care Infectious Diseases.

In 2019, she earned the UT Southwestern Program Development Award for Leadership in Clinical Excellence.