About

Dr. Asher’s clinical interests include endovascular infections, viral hepatitis, and HIV. She is interested in caring for infectious diseases in persons with substance use disorders. Her research is broadly focused on the intersection of infectious diseases and substance use disorders, and how to improve the care of patients hospitalized with severe, injection drug-related infections. She utilizes large datasets to study outcomes following invasive infections – such as infective endocarditis and bone, joint, and spine infections – affecting people who inject drugs, in both North Carolina and the US. Additionally, through qualitative methods, her team examines how to identify and develop patient-centered approaches to disease prevention, inpatient addiction care and harm reduction, and long-term antibiotic delivery. She is also interested in Hepatitis C epidemiology, HIV health services research, and clinical practice issues related to outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy (OPAT), as well as clinical quality improvement activities in these spheres. She benefits from a wide array of collaborators, including public health professionals, cardiac surgeons, addiction medicine specialists, epidemiologists, and health behavior researchers.

In the news

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  ID Researchers Contribute to ID Week Conference

  This year’s ID Week will take place October 19-22, 2025, in Atlanta, GA. ID Week is the joint annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, the HIV Medicine Association, the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society, and the Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists. Following is a list of … Read more

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  Models of Outpatient Parenteral Antimicrobial Therapy Care

  Asher Schranz, MD, MPH, and Claire Farel, MD, MPH, discuss the responses to their study, stating that there is diversity in how outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy (OPAT) exists and how they are structured. To their knowledge, there is no defined optimal team structure for OPAT, and practice models vary based on clinical need and available resources. Some … Read more

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  Study Shows Drug Use-Associated Endocarditis Increases Hospital Risk For Bacterial Infections

  David Rosen, PhD, MD, and Asher Schranz, MD, MPH, members of the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, found people with drug use-associated infective endocarditis are at high risk of mortality and future hospitalization for bacterial infections, including endocarditis, skin and soft tissue infections and bacteremia. The study, a collaboration with the North Carolina … Read more

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  IGHID Investigators Discuss Projects As New Academic Year Begins

  Global health research is a collaborative process, and each researcher at the Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases contributes a piece to solving the puzzle of disease and morbidity. With a new academic year underway, read what some of our investigators are working on to improve the health of global populations. Their multi-disciplinary findings will be … Read more

Education