• The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania has received the "triple crown" of national awards for excellence in health care. The most recent were the Ernest A. Codman Award from the Joint Commission for Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) and the Excellence in Healthcare Risk Management Award from Modern Healthcare and MMI Companies, Inc. The Codman Award was for excellence in using outcomes measurement to improve the quality of care, thereby increasing patient satisfaction and improving clinical outcomes. The Excellence in Healthcare Risk Management Award commended the hospital for its Health and Disease Management Program, which responds to healthcare risk by addressing both clinical improvements and economic impact. Penn is the first academic health system to win this highly competitive award. The third award was the National Quality Health Care Award from the National Committee for Quality Health Care.

• Robert Summers and Alan Heston have been named 1999 Fellows of the American Economics Association, in recognition of their work on the Penn World Table, a computer program used by economists and researchers all over the world for comparing economic outputs of all countries, using continuously updated data. Summers, a professor emeritus, and Heston, still a member of the economics department, created the program along with the late Irving Kravis, also a professor of economics. The award goes to only two professors nationwide.

• Helen C. Davies, professor of microbiology and faculty master of Spruce College House, has won the 1998 Lifetime Mentor Award, given annually by the American Association for the Advancement of Science for guiding members of underrepresented groups to completing doctoral studies. The award will be presented in January at the AAAS annual meeting in Anaheim.

• P. Roy Vagelos, M.D., chair of the Board of Trustees, was honored with the 1999 Bower Award in Business Leadership by the Franklin Institute for his work combating river blindness, a disease spread by contaminated water in many African countries. Vagelos was the CEO and chairmain of the board of pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. at the time the company began donating massive quantities of a drug needed to fight the disease. The program to date has warded off blindness for 18 million of the drug's recipients.

• Ray Gorte, Carl V.S. Patterson Professor of Chemical Engineering and chair of the department of chemical engineering, will receive the Paul H. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis of the North American Catalysis Society, the highest award in the field of catalysis, given biennially for contributions to discovery and understanding of catalytic phenomena.

• Karen Rile, who has been affiliated with Writers House as a teacher and otherwise for the past year, has won a Leeway Grant from the Leeway Foundation's awards for artists, under the category 1998 grants for excellence in creative nonfiction.

• Warren A. Katz, M.D., a profesor of medicine and director of Physicians Strategic Planning at Presbyterian Medical Center, was awarded the Joseph Lee Hollander Award by the Arthritis Foundation, Eastern Pennyslvania Chapter, for his achievements in rheumatology.

• Marvin E. Steinberg, M.D., professor and vice chairman of the department of orthopaedic surgery, was awarded the Sir John Charley Award by the Arthritis Foundation, Eastern Pennsylvania Chapter, for his achievements in orthopaedics.

• David G. De Long (GAr'63, Hon'87), professor of architecture and of city and regional planning, was presented with the 11th annual Wyck-Strickland Award, for his contributions in architecture and preservation.
     The award was presented by the Wyck Association, which benefits Wyck, a National Historic Landmark house and garden in Philadelphia's Germantown area. Nine of the 10 prior honorees, including Robert Venturi, Edmund Bacon, Denise Scott Brown, and Romaldo Giurgola, have Penn connections.

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