Tori Kinamon
Tori Kinamon was a Division I collegiate gymnast at Brown University when she contracted a life-threatening Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection from the athletic setting. She had eight surgeries in two weeks to debride an 18cm abscess and associated hamstring pyomyositis from her left leg. She was in the hospital for over a month, including a five-day stay in the ICU, as her infection progressed to septic shock.
Following her hospitalization, and after an extensive recovery period, she made it her mission to reframe her traumatic experience into something that would benefit others. Tori did this by devoting herself to research. She wanted to understand why certain infections spread among certain populations and how to best prevent the spread of these infections. Ultimately, she embarked upon researching antibiotic development and antimicrobial resistance at large.
She matriculated to Duke University School of Medicine in 2019, where she studied vertebral osteomyelitis under the guidance of Dr. Vance Fowler and completed a two-year ORISE fellowship at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. During that time, she developed novel, patient-centered endpoints for the top indications in infectious disease clinical trials.
She is currently a first-year Orthopaedic Surgery resident at Brooke Army Medical Center, with a special interest in the management of musculoskeletal infections. A tireless patient advocate, Tori strives to raise awareness about the threat of antimicrobial resistance in the community, promote the early recognition of sepsis, and highlight the importance of infection prevention and control strategies in the athletic, college, and military settings.
