Daniel Dempsey, MD, MBA, FACS, chief of Gastrointestinal Surgery, assistant director of Peri-Operative Services for the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and a professor of Surgery, received the Strittmatter Award from the Philadelphia County Medical Society (PCMS). He will officially accept this award on June 29 at the Society’s President’s Installation and Awards Night. The Strittmatter Award, dating back to 1923 and considered the Society’s most prestigious award, is given to a PCMS physician who has made “the most valuable contributions to the healing arts.”
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) appointed Amol Navathe, MD, PhD, co-director of the Healthcare Transformation Institute and associate director of the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics at Penn, to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC). Congress established MedPAC in 1997 to analyze access to care, cost and quality of care, and other key issues affecting Medicare. MedPAC advises Congress on payments to providers in Medicare’s traditional fee-for-service programs and to health plans participating in the Medicare Advantage program. Navathe, an assistant professor at Penn and staff physician at the Corporal Michael J. Crescenz VA Medical Center, and his research group designs, tests, and evaluates payment models for national insurers and state Blue Cross Blue Shield plans. He also leads the American Hospital Association’s national bundled payment collaborative to disseminate evidence-based best practices. Among other appointments, Navathe was formerly a Managing Director, Healthcare Value Transformation, at Navigant. Navathe received his MD from the University of Pennsylvania and his PhD in Health Care Management and Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Susan S. Ellenberg, PhD, a professor of Biostatistics, Medical Ethics and Health Policy, received the 2019 Florence N. David Award from the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies which includes the American Statistical Association, the Eastern North American Region International Biometric Society, the Western North American Region of the International Biometric Society, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and the Statistical Society of Canada. Named after Florence Nightingale David, an accomplished statistician and the first recipient of the Elizabeth L. Scott Award, this honor is given each year to a female statistician who serves as a role model to other women by her contributions to the profession through excellence in research, leadership of multidisciplinary collaborative groups, statistics education, or service to the professional societies. As part of this recognition, Ellenberg will deliver the F.N. David Lecture at the Joint Statistical Meetings in Denver in July.
Ravi Parikh, MD, a fellow in Hematology-Oncology, received a 2019 Harry F. Bisel, MD, Endowed Young Investigator Award from the Conquer Cancer Foundation and the American Society of Clinical Oncology. The $50,000 award will go toward Parikh’s research, entitled, “Checkpoint Inhibitor Therapy in Patients with Poor Performance Status: Real-World Uptake and Effectiveness.” Parikh officially accepted the award at the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago.
Robert H. Vonderheide, MD, DPhil, director of the Abramson Cancer Center, received a Stand Up to Cancer grant for his role as the leader of a Pancreatic Cancer Collective New Therapies Challenge Research Team. The team’s project is titled, “Antigenicity of mutant KRAS and impact on cancer evolution.” Their work will combine expertise in immunobiology and computational biology to analyze three unique, clinically curated datasets, including short- and long-term pancreatic cancer survivors, primary resected pancreatic cancers, and mKRAS lung and colon cancers, to investigate how mKRAS immunogenicity may dictate outcomes. The two-year grant provides $225,000 in total funding for this research effort.
Kirk Wangensteen, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of Gastroenterology and Genetics, received the 2019 Beckman Young Investigator Award. This award fosters the invention of techniques, instruments and materials in the chemical and life sciences. The recognition from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation comes a $600,000 grant, which Wangensteen will put toward creating genetic methods to uncover new targets and treatments for MYC-driven liver cancer. Wangensteen is one of only 10 researchers in the country to receive this award in 2019.
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.
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