PHILADELPHIA — Scott D. Halpern, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, has been selected for AcademyHealth's 2011 Alice S. Hersh New Investigator Award. Since 1986, the honor recognizes scholars who are early in their health services research career and exhibit extraordinary potential for new discoveries.
According to AcademyHealth, the honor acknowledges Halpern's contributions to many high-profile journals including Annals of Internal Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Archives of Internal Medicine, and the New England Journal of Medicine. Halpern's work as a consultant with several federal agencies including the NIH, FDA, CDC, UNOS, The World Bank, and various committees to the U.S. Secretary for Health and Human Services are also reflected in this achievement.
As deputy director of the Leonard David Institute Center for Health Incentives, Halpern's research interests include the allocation of scarce health care resources to fairly accommodate the interests of individuals and groups involved, and behavioral economics to help patients make better choices in end-of-life decision-making, clinical trial participation and other health decisions.
Funded by grants from the National Cancer Institute, Greenwall Foundation, National Institute on Aging, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Society of Critical Care Medicine and American Thoracic Society, Halpern's research joins empirical aspects of epidemiology, health services research, and decision-making sciences with conceptual work in moral philosophy.
Halpern's achievement will be announced at the AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting on June 13.
The mark of distinction celebrates Alice Hersh, the founding executive director of the Association for Health Services Research (a predecessor of AcademyHealth), for her efforts to assist future health service researchers.
Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System’s patient care facilities stretch from the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania to the New Jersey shore. These include the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chester County Hospital, Lancaster General Health, Penn Medicine Princeton Health, and Pennsylvania Hospital—the nation’s first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional facilities and enterprises include Good Shepherd Penn Partners, Penn Medicine at Home, Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital, and Princeton House Behavioral Health, among others.
Penn Medicine is an $11.1 billion enterprise powered by more than 49,000 talented faculty and staff.