News Releases

Patricia Sullivan, PhD, Vice President of Clinical Development at the University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS) since 2003, has been promoted to Vice President, Quality and Patient Safety. In her current position, Sullivan is responsible for efforts to reduce clinical risks – a key UPHS initiative – as well as improving the process of patient care across Penn Medicine.

A new study by addiction experts at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine found that patients who suffer from both depression and alcohol dependence benefitted more from a medication combination of an antidepressant, sertraline, and naltrexone, an FDA-approved treatment for heavy drinking, compared to either medication alone or placebo. During a 14-week treatment trial, the medication combination produced high abstinence rates as well as reduction in depressive symptoms.

An approach designed to reduce HIV/STDs previously used exclusively by academic researchers has successfully been implemented by community-based organizations (CBOs), an important component in national strategies to curtail the spread of HIV, meaning far more “at risk” youths can be reached.

A new rapid blood test to rule out appendicitis among the 8 million patients who come to U.S. emergency rooms with abdominal pain each year may save patients from unnecessary radiation from a diagnostic CT scan, eliminate extra tests and hours of hospital observation, and cut costs in the process.

Sayre Health Center is a full-service, primary care health facility at the rear of Sayre High School, 59th and Walnut streets, that has been serving the needs of residents of West Philadelphia since the fall of 2007. On Tuesday, March 30, the health center will become the Dr. Bernett L. Johnson Jr. Sayre Health Center in ceremonies designed to honor the vision and legacy of the man behind its founding.

More than 250 people are expected to attend Penn Medicine’s 4th annual “Focus on Gastrointestinal Cancers” conference. The event is offered to those at risk or in treatment for colon, liver or pancreatic cancer, as well as survivors, family members, caregivers and health care professionals. Gayle Jackson, mother of Philadelphia Eagles’ wide receiver DeSean Jackson – whose father died of pancreatic cancer in 2009 – will give an inspirational keynote address titled “A Caregiver’s Story.” The conference, sponsored by the Abramson Cancer Center, is free of charge.

A team of cardiologists, materials scientists, and bioengineers have created and tested a new type of implantable device for measuring the heart’s electrical output that they say is a vast improvement over current devices. The new device represents the first use of flexible silicon technology for a medical application.

University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and AstraZeneca Working Together to Find New Therapies for Alzheimer’s Disease

Penn researchers have made a surprising discovery regarding the molecular basis underlying spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), an often fatal neurodegenerative disease and the most common genetic cause of childhood mortality.

In the first empirical study of how Americans might make decisions if offered financial incentives for kidney donation while alive, Penn researchers found that the offer of payment did not cloud a person’s judgment of the risks associated with live kidney donation, motivate poorer persons to sell a kidney, or “crowd out” a person’s altruistic incentives to donate.