Mark A. Shelly, M.D.

Professional Background

Dr. Mark Shelly is a board certified Infectious Disease (ID) physician in active clinical practice as the director of the Infectious Disease Unit at Highland Hospital. He takes a special interest in tropical medicine and travel related disease, and is the Medical Director of Passport Health of Upstate NY.

Dr. Shelly serves as Hospital Epidemiologist for Highland Hospital. This involves creating and adapting best practices in the control of hospital associated infections. He has been actively involved in community wide collaborative projects to control central-line associated blood stream infections outside the ICU (as co-principle investigator) and Clostridium difficile infection in the Rochester area. These efforts have resulted in many posters and presentations at national ID meetings, as well as publications in healthcare epidemiology literature. In 2011 Dr. Shelly was presented the Award to Outstanding Contribution to Infection Prevention by the Rochester-Finger Lakes chapter of the Association of Practitioners in Infection Control and Prevention (APIC).

As a communicator, Dr. Shelly is frequently asked to teach on infectious disease subjects at all levels of professional experience. This includes lectures and Grand Rounds as well as one-on-one teaching of resident physicians at the patient bedside. He has appeared as a panelist numerous times on the nationally syndicated PBS television program "Second Opinion".

Previous research activities have included working with dengue virus and issues related to conjugate pneumococcal immunization in the older population. Dr. Shelly has traveled to francophone Africa as PI for a USAID project on applied research related to childhood vaccination in Mali (1992-7) and as a visiting professor in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Current research activity involves investigations of issues related to healthcare associated infections.

His formal medical training began at the Jefferson Medical College (1982-86) followed by Internal Medicine residency at Strong Memorial Hospital (1986-89). He remained at the University of Rochester for a fellowship in Infectious Disease (1989-92). He has been an ID consultant at Highland Hospital since that time. He is in the third of four generations of physicians in his family, including his grandparents, parents, and daughter.