In brief, what’s happening at Penn—whether it’s across campus or around the world.
New research from Penn Medicine finds that offering financial incentives to hospitals has the potential to drive swift systemic and practical changes to intervene in the opioid epidemic.
FULL STORY AT Penn Medicine News →
The impact of pandemic isolation can be especially profound for cancer patients who previously found a sense of community in support groups. This past fall, the Abramson Cancer Center at Pennsylvania Hospital partnered with the nonprofit Sisters R Us Circle of Survivors to foster these crucial personal connections through a virtual breast cancer symposium.
FULL STORY AT Penn Medicine News →
On February 17, nurses from Penn Nursing and Penn Medicine shared their true, personal stories for Penn Nursing’s third annual Story Slam event. Due to the current guidelines and restrictions around the pandemic, the event was held virtually, but that did not lessen the impact or vibrancy of the storytellers and their tales, developed around the theme, “Stepping Up.”
FULL STORY AT Penn Nursing News →
A direct-to-consumer blood test for a key Alzheimer’s biomarker may be inevitable, but Penn Program on Precision Medicine for the Brain researchers Jason Karlawish, Emily Largent, and Anna Wexler warn that receiving results from such a test comes with potential challenges. The team weigh the risks and benefits of these blood tests in an article for JAMA Neurology titled “The Future is p-Tau—Anticipating Direct-to-Consumer Alzheimer’s Disease Blood Tests.”
FULL STORY AT Penn Memory Center →
A new study may explain how brain dysfunction gives rise to sleep disruptions in children with neurodevelopmental disorders.
FULL STORY AT Penn Medicine News →
A Phase 3 clinical trial shows that Avacopan, which targets a receptor that attracts the cells that cause inflammation, was shown to be more effective at keeping patients in remission for a year than prednisone.
FULL STORY AT Penn Medicine News →
The often non-obvious connections and entangled synergies of the U.S. voting process, health disparities, and structural racism were the subjects of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics’ first virtual seminar of 2021. Moderated by Atheendar Venkataramani, senior fellow and director of the Perelman School of Medicine’s Opportunity for Health Lab, the event featured three other top experts in the fields of political science, voting rights and health disparities: Nicole Austin-Hillery, executive director of the U.S.
FULL STORY AT Leonard Davis Institute →
The Epilepsy Monitoring Unit and the Human Neurophysiology Research Laboratory at the new Pavilion at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania is a twelve bed unit will be equipped with cameras, recording equipment, and monitor–advanced imaging to help find where seizures coming from in the brain.
FULL STORY AT Penn Medicine News →
Two new research grant programs have been launched in partnership with the Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry to help advance innovative breakthroughs in dental medicine, with Penn Health-Tech and the Penn Medicine Center for Health Care Innovation incorporating these funding opportunities into their annual call for proposals for medical devices and health technology development projects.
FULL STORY AT Penn Dental Medicine →
In states that expanded Medicaid after the Affordable Care Act, safety-net hospitals (SNHs) saw their operating margins improve and levels of uncompensated care decrease. But a new study finds that while SNHs were also able to scale up some safety-net services—such as inpatient psychiatric care—these changes did not translate into measurable improvements in quality.
FULL STORY AT Leonard Davis Institute →
