Mandefro is a primary care physician and anthropologist who uses oral histories to teach patients about healthcare. As a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar and a Senior Fellow at Penn’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, she has researched violence prevention and HIV prevention and the use of digital media in translating research. She founded a nonprofit organization, TruthAIDS, to educate patients about HIV prevention, and has produced a documentary film aired on Showtime Networks for World AIDS Day about HIV positive women in the South Bronx and Ethiopia. Mandefro has worked as a public health practitioner in Kenya, Botswana, and South Africa on issues of access to care, HIV treatment adherence, and health worker training.
She is among 15 Fellows who will take part in an education program and Washington, DC-based service projects over the next year. Created in 1964 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, the Fellows program is designed to give promising American leaders first-hand experience with the federal government and encourage service to the nation. Fellows represent a wide range of professions including medicine, business, media, education, non-profit and state government and the U.S. military.
Novel plant-based approach to a better, cheaper GLP-1 delivery system
Research led by Penn Dental’s Henry Daniell investigates the use of a lettuce-based, plant-encapsulated delivery platform as a new oral delivery of two GLP-1 drugs previously approved by the FDA in injectable form.
No brain, no gain: Neuronal activity enhances benefits of exercise
Research led by Penn neuroscientist J. Nicholas Betley and collaborators finds that hypothalamic neurons are essential for translating physical exertion into endurance, potentially opening the door to exercise-mimicking therapies.
In honor of Valentine's Day, and as a way of fostering community in her Shakespeare in Love course, Becky Friedman took her students to the University Club for lunch one class period. They talked about the movie "Shakespeare in Love," as part of a broader conversation on how Shakespeare's works are adapted.
In Becky Friedman’s English course Shakespeare in Love, undergraduate students analyze language, genre, and adaptation in the Bard’s plays through the lens of love.
Beating the heat: Designing cooling for bodies in motion
Dorit Aviv, director of Weitzman’s Thermal Architecture Lab, studies how humans, technology, and design intersect, paving the way for the development of novel approaches to cooling people efficiently.
