Penn Medicine is the place that made a whole new type of vaccines possible by harnessing the power of mRNA. It’s also the place that first cured cancer by re-engineering patients’ own immune cells to conquer their disease. And Penn Medicine is the place where the first gene therapy became an approved treatment, reversing an inherited form of blindness. All of these banner discoveries took decades of effort for novel ideas to become clinical treatments making a difference for patients, and they are among countless other stakes planted in the ground here. Dozens of new treatments and cures, in just the past few years, are rooted at Penn.
That it all happened here is more than just luck. Whether recruiting and promoting the right people, or smoothing processes associated with clinical research and developing intellectual property, Penn Medicine’s leaders have deliberately invested in making this a place where we create new medicines that the world needs — as detailed in our package of stories about our track record transforming medical advancements into FDA-approved therapies. The next generation of innovation is well underway, as our researchers define an entirely new field that could intercept cancer cells at the earliest phases and forestall the disease altogether.
In short, Penn Medicine is a place where we make breathtaking discoveries and put them to work.
That phrase is both a directive and a guiding principle. In fact, it’s one of five guiding pillars for Penn Medicine’s new strategic planning process that is in progress this academic year. The five pillars derive from the organization’s core missions that our faculty and staff work to advance every day. But these pillars also refocus our community with specific goals in mind. The research mission isn’t solely about discovery for the sake of knowledge or intrigue. Breathtaking discoveries push the boundaries of what we thought possible — and putting them to work means we push for those discoveries to change the world for the better.
As another example: Penn Medicine’s educational mission is about more than just conferring degrees, which is why the charge is instead to develop people for great accomplishment. Medical students come to the Perelman School of Medicine to learn and grow in an environment that supports them as they flourish along paths of their own design — as with the student-initiated PennHealthX group that for 10 years has created learning opportunities at the intersection of medicine, business, and technology. The strategic planning process asks us to consider, what more can we do to make Penn Medicine a place where people grow for great accomplishment — in the classroom, in clinical training, and in the professional workforce?
Similar questions and aspirations follow across the remaining three pillars: Making care easy and putting it within reach; uplifting our community, our environment, and ourselves; and leading with humanity in all that we do. Every decade of Penn Medicine’s long history tells the story of our commitment to these principles. Now, hundreds of faculty and leaders from across the organization are working together to plan how we will take that work forward for the next five years as the world is changing all around us.
Since the last time the organization undertook a strategic planning process, in 2017, the COVID-19 pandemic upended the way health care had been delivered for generations, reshaped the economic forces that propel research and improvements in patient care, and shifted countless aspects of the wider society in which Penn Medicine exists. The challenges have grown more acute and more urgent in areas from racial health inequity to climate change to the cost of health care.
That state of change is an impetus and a source of momentum for the work that lies ahead, according to J. Larry Jameson, MD, PhD, executive vice dean of the University of Pennsylvania for the Health System and dean of the Perelman School of Medicine. The fundamental question is, “What does the world need from Penn Medicine and how can we deliver it?” “Let’s be even bolder now,” he said, in kicking off the planning process this December. “It is time for us to embrace the opportunity for Penn Medicine to shape what we can do in the world.”