Vital Signs

 

1. Anthony J. Mazzarelli, MD, JD’02, MBE’02

Co-President, Cooper University Health Care; Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Cooper Medical School of Rowan University

Mazzarelli oversees all clinical operations, quality, patient safety, continuous process improvement, patient care services, and facilities for the entire Cooper health system including all inpatient and ambulatory operations, as well as the employed faculty physician practice for the medical school. He continues to see patients in the emergency department as well as lecture medical students and residents about health care policy and bioethics.

2. Pasquale Patrizio, MD, MBE’03

Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences; Director, Yale Fertility Center and Fertility Preservation Program; Teacher, Yale Center of Bioethics and Medical Ethics

Patrizio specializes clinically on treatment of both female and male infertility. His research interests include fertility preservation for cancer and other medical or non-medical conditions, oocyte (egg) freezing, methods to assess egg and embryo competence, and a variety of ethical issues in assisted reproduction.

3. David Sontag, JD, MBE’03

First Deputy General Counsel and Co-Chair, Ethics Advisory Committee, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC); Lecturer on Medicine and Center for Bioethics Faculty, Harvard Medical School

Sontag’s professional life is half in law and half in bioethics (and all the spaces in between). His current legal practice focuses on legal and compliance issues related to corporate and clinical affiliations with the medical center, as well as guardianships and other patient care matters. In the bioethics sphere, Sontag serves as co-chair of the BIDMC Ethics Advisory Committee and is involved in BIDMC’s Ethics Liaison program; he is often consulted and asked to speak about legal and ethical issues that arise in the clinical setting. He currently teaches the capstone seminar for Harvard Medical School’s Master of Bioethics Program.

4. Wendy Sue Swanson, MD’03, MBE’03

Chief of Digital Innovation, Seattle Children’s Hospital

Pediatrician Swanson is the author of the Seattle Mama Doc Blog at Seattle Children’s Hospital. She is working to transform health communications by using social and digital media to bridge the gap between parents and doctors. As the first physician blogger for a U.S. hospital, she has led the way for novel use of social media in health care.

5. Salimah Meghani, MSN’01, PhD’05, MBE’05

Associate Professor of Nursing and Term Chair of Palliative Care, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing

Meghani’s main research focuses on health disparities among vulnerable populations in palliative care. She currently leads an American Cancer Society-funded project to elicit ideas from patients and family members to improve cancer pain management and to decrease disparities. Meghani has served on state and national committees to improve care for persons with advanced serious illness, including an Institute of Medicine committee on end-of-life care.

6. Jason Schwartz, PhD’12, MBE’06

Assistant Professor of Health Policy and the History of Medicine, Yale University

Schwartz’s research and teaching examine how evidence is interpreted, evaluated, and translated into regulation and policy in medicine and public health. His particular areas of focus include vaccines and vaccination programs, the structure and function of scientific expert advice to government, and the activities of U.S. federal health agencies.

7. Erin Talati Paquette, JD, MD, MBE’07

Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Critical Care, Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University; Associate Chair Ethics Advisory Board, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago

Paquette's scholarly work focuses on research ethics, including informed consent, evaluating for disparities in research enrollment and research oversight, ethics in critical care, including communication in the ICU, brain death, and organ donation, and conflict resolution. She teaches in ethics courses at Northwestern’s medical and law schools, performs ethics consultations, and attends in the Pediatric ICU.

8. Mark Swope, MDiv, PhD, MBE’07

Director, Medical Ethics for Carilion Clinic & Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine 

An ordained Roman Catholic priest, Swope has supported parishes administratively and liturgically. Under Swope’s direction, the Virginia Tech Department of Medical Ethics supports education, policies and training programs for medical ethics committees and consultants, and hospital staff to assist clinicians in responding to ethical issues that arise in the care of patients. Swope is an advocate of holistic medicine who believes in supporting people physically, mentally, socially and spiritually.

9. Sheldon Sloan, MD, MBE’08

Immunology Global Medical Affairs Leader for Inflammatory Bowel Disease at Janssen

Sloan’s medical affairs leadership includes identifying and championing clinical studies as well as publication planning for his portfolio area at Janssen pharmaceuticals, and syndicating regional needs into a unifying strategy. Within the company he is a founding member and former chair of the Johnson & Johnson Bioethics Committee. He also serves on external advisory boards and task forces for educational and nonprofit organizations that draw on his bioethics expertise.

10. Kavita Shah Arora, MD, MBE’09

Assistant Professor of Reproductive Biology and Bioethics, Case Western Reserve; Director of Quality, MetroHealth Medical Center

Arora is a practicing obstetrician/gynecologist whose research interests include reproductive ethics, disparities surrounding postpartum contraception and sterilization, and patient-centered quality of care. She is passionate about translating data to evidence-based, patient-centered health policy. She currently serves on the governing council for the Young Physicians Section of the American Medical Association, the ethics committee for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the board of directors of the American Society for Bioethics and the Humanities.

11. Mary K. Walton, BSN’74, MSN’81, MBE’10, RN, FAAN

Director, Patient and Family Centered Care, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania

Walton leads system-wide efforts to improve the patient experience in the acute care hospital setting. As a nurse ethicist at HUP, she chairs the hospital ethics committee and leads the clinical consult service working with front line clinicians to address the value-laden concerns that arise in care.

12. Renatha Joseph, MD, MMED, MBE’12

Lecturer and Head of the Bioethics and Health Professionalism Department, Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS)

A pediatrician, Joseph was among the five MBE fellows from MUHAS who received bioethics training to build the university’s capacity in bioethics teaching. She teaches bioethics, professionalism and pediatrics and child health to both undergraduates and post graduate students. Her research interest is informed consent in pediatric care, especially adolescents with chronic diseases. In 2017, she was appointed as a member of the National Bioethics Commission of Tanzania, in the process of establishment.

13. Robyn Schneider, MBE’12

Novelist and Screenwriter

Schneider is the bestselling author of three young-adult novels. Her stories center on modern teen characters coming of age while facing medical issues such as an infectious disease outbreak, supernatural illness, and physical disability. A film adaptation of her novel The Beginning of Everything is in the works based on her screenplay. “In fiction and in medical ethics, every story starts with a question and a person who must make a choice,” Schneider said. “I know what I would do at a tuberculosis sanatorium in the last days before they announce a cure, but what about a seventeen-year-old who has fallen in love for the first time? To find the answer, I write the novel.”

14. Emily Kramer-Golinkoff, BA’07, MBE’13

Co-Founder, Emily’s Entourage

Kramer-Golinkoff is the co-founder of a nonprofit organization that has awarded over $2.7 million since 2011 in high-impact research grants for cystic fibrosis. She is an internationally recognized patient advocate and speaker who has advanced-stage cystic fibrosis herself and has been honored as a White House Precision Medicine “Champion of Change.” “I do credit the MBE program with giving me my voice as a patient advocate and fundraiser,” she said, “empowering me to see that my story has value and can help bring about change in science, medicine, and the world.”

15. Kholoud Alnakshabandi, MD, MBE’14

Demonstrator, Psychiatry Department, King Saud University

Alnakshabandi began her psychiatry residency ten months after earning her MBE degree at Penn. The bioethics lens helps her raise important questions to the evolving field of psychiatry in Saudi Arabia. “Areas such as mental health patients’ capacity to make decisions, issues of admitting against their will,” and more, are among the key issues, she said. “I believe that applying bioethics in any field is a life-long process that evolves with one’s career.”

16. Joshua B. Kayser, MD, MPH, MBE’14

Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine and Medical Ethics, Perelman School of Medicine; Director, Medical Intensive Care Unit & Section Chief, Medical Critical Care, Cpl. Michael J. Crescenz VA Medical  Center

Kayser specializes in Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine and Hospice & Palliative Medicine. His academic focus is at the intersection of medical ethics, communication & professionalism and end-of-life care in the ICU. He is the Course Director of two medical school courses at Penn: Doctoring IB – Patient- and Family-Centered Care and Communication (MS1), and Frontiers in Bioethics and Professionalism (MS4).

17. Mehrin ("Mir") Masud-Elias, JD, MBE’15

Executive Director of Legal Affairs & Immunotherapy Collaborations, Abramson Cancer Center (ACC)

Masud-Elias coordinates institutional management and oversight of immunotherapy initiatives, collaborative grants, contracts, and agreements in close collaboration with the Penn Center for Innovation and the Office of General Counsel. She also directs the ACC’s Office of Legal Affairs, providing practical and strategic legal advice.

18. Margaret Landi, VMD’79, MBE’16

Chief Veterinarian and VP of the Office of Animal Welfare, Ethics and Strategy at GlaxoSmithKline

Landi formally entered the field of bioethics after a more operational role in the pharmaceutical industry. “I see my position to frame and encourage debate on the moral status of research animals,” she said. She is active in presentations, lectures and in leadership roles within the veterinary and animal research community.

19. Maj. Jason Unsworth, MDiv, MBE’16

Bioethics Instructor - U.S. Army Medical Department Center and School at Fort Sam Houston, Texas

Unsworth teaches bioethics for the Army-Baylor Masters in Health and Business Administration. “The Penn MBE gave me a solid foundation in the problems and methods of bioethics,” he said. “I use what I learned at Penn every day in my teaching.”

20. Michael S. Weinstein, MD, MBE’16

Associate Professor of Surgery, Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University Co-Chair of Hospital Ethics Committee, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital

Weinstein is an acute care/trauma surgeon who recently published his personal narrative of personal struggles and recovery from physician burnout and serious mental illness in the New England Journal of Medicine. His interests include healthcare provider wellness, ethics and professionalism, and global surgery. 

Match Day

 

Outstanding Inventors

In an academic year that has already seen first-in-class approvals by the Food and Drug Administration of cellular and gene therapies invented at Penn, there are still more advances to celebrate. In 2017 alone, inventors from across the University received a total of 111 patents—the highest ever in a year since the Penn Center for Innovation (PCI) started counting. At PCI’s second annual Celebration of Innovation, these Penn inventors each took home a pin and a personalized cube representing their patents. A few innovators from the Perelman School of Medicine received more honors.

Yvonne Paterson, PhD, a professor of Microbiology, received the Inventor of the Year honor. As was highlighted in Penn Medicine (Fall 2016), Paterson holds numerous patents for techniques that are advancing toward clinical therapies.

Daniel Powell Jr., PhD, an associate professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and of Obstetrics and Gynecology, was named the 2017-18 Emerging Inventor of the Year in recognition of his numerous inventions related to T-cell manufacturing and improvements to CAR T cell therapies.

In addition, Drew Weissman, MD, PhD, a professor of Medicine in Infectious Diseases, was honored for Deal of the Year in recognition of the 2017 license restructuring between Penn and mRNA Ribotherapeutics and sublicenses to BioNTech and another large biotechnology company.

 

Honors & Awards

 

 

Keyword Cheat Sheet

A few words to know from recent Penn Medicine research

Concussion symptoms were remarkably similar to those seen in U.S. government personnel who were evaluated at Penn’s Center for Brain Injury and Repair after experiencing audible phenomena while serving in Havana, Cuba. The researchers reported in JAMA that the symptoms represent a potential new neurological syndrome involving persistent memory and thinking dysfunction, as well as vision and balance problems.

 

 

“Hidden responders”among cancer patients are those whose tumors might respond to certain therapies, but whose tumors don’t have the specific genetic marker that is known to indicate that susceptibility. A Penn Medicine team publishing in Cell Reports found that these patients can be pinpointed via artificial intelligence. The upshot is that the transcriptome, or collection of messenger RNA active in a person’s cells, is underused in bringing precision to oncology, but when combined with machine learning it can aid in identifying potential hidden responders.

 

 

 

An icebreaker ship works in a manner analogous to a transcription factor protein called TCF-1, which opens a path for other transcription factors to access DNA in a developing T cell. The ice in this analogy is condensed chromatin that keeps DNA tightly wrapped. The findings were published in Immunity. The new connection between TCF-1 and chromatin will aid in developing new therapies using epigenetic drugs to alter T-cell fate in cancer, autoimmune disorders, and infectious diseases. 
Art work by Stacie Leigh Bumgarner

 

 

 

The interstitium is a previously unknown feature of the human body that has potential implications for the function of most organs and for the mechanism of many diseases. This system of interconnected, fluid-filled compartments lies below the skin’s surface, lining the digestive tract, lungs and urinary systems, and around arteries, veins, and the space between muscles. The research team from Penn, Mount Sinai Beth Israel Medical Center, and the New York University School of Medicine, described their finding in Scientific Reports.

 

 

Ridesharing, a relatively simple, inexpensive approach to address transportation barriers—may not be the easy fix some believe it to be for the problem of patients missing medical appointments. When the service was offered for free to low-income patients, it did not improve the rate of missed appointments, according to a Penn study published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

 

 

Satisfaction—not educational outcomes—changes when resident physicians’ work hours are limited to 16-hour work shifts, compared to “flexing” them to allow for some longer shifts, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. While residents were satisfied with the limited hours, their training directors were more dissatisfied with curtailed educational opportunities. The study is part of a major, five-year effort in which researchers surveyed and tracked the activities of thousands of first-year residents in 63 internal medicine training programs nationwide.