5/18
Penn in the News
A round-up of Penn mentions in local, national, and international media.
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Penn In the News
Regional roundup
Heather Sharkey and undergrad Lindsey Perlman of the School of Arts & Sciences spoke about their work transcribing the doctoral dissertation of feminist Alice Paul, who earned a Ph.D. at Penn in 1912.
Penn In the News
‘It’s OK to not be OK’: For clients’ mental health, and their own, therapists managed intense new demands
Ariane Thomas of the Graduate School of Education spoke about the challenges of being a mental health professional over the last year. “The stressors and the symptoms that people are experiencing are exacerbated by the pandemic, the racial unrest, the intensity of the election, and the way the election dragged on, and the fallout since the election, the attack on voting rights,” she said. “It feels like it hasn’t quite let up. And as a result, neither has the request for support.”
Penn In the News
Pa. coronavirus update: North Philly to get vaccination site; Study finds variants spread in city
Frederic Bushman of the Perelman School of Medicine spoke about a recent study that found that more than one-third of Philadelphia COVID-19 infections were caused by variants of the virus. “The fear is that the virus is evolving to infect people more efficiently,” he said.
Penn In the News
Black men in Philly are more likely to experience poor mental health after severe injury, a new study shows
Sara Jacoby of the School of Nursing co-led a study about how returning, or not returning, to work after a traumatic injury impacted the mental health of Black men living in Philadelphia. “If your economic stability, your financial opportunity is contingent on work, which it is for many of us, then not returning to work is an additional barrier to healing … because you’re further stressed by the inability to make your day-to-day work,” said Jacoby.
Penn In the News
Wolf administration to buy half of state government’s electricity from solar
Mark Hughes of the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy said Pennsylvania’s solar fields will provide jobs and tax revenue and move the state toward clean energy. “You want to make it hip, you want to make it cheap—but eventually you’re going to have to make it mandatory,” he said.
Penn In the News
Philly Council changes mixed-income housing bonus rules for Southwest Center City
Vincent Reina and grad student Camille Boggan of the Stuart Weitzman School of Design spoke about a recent amendment to a zoning bill that would exempt developers in the 19146 zip code, a rapidly gentrifying area, from the option to pay into Philadelphia’s Housing Trust Fund instead of offering affordable units in new buildings. “Removing money from the Housing Trust Fund is concerning,” said Boggan. “A lot of homeowners rely on that for home repairs.”
Penn In the News
‘This is something that we weren’t taught’: How a brand-new nurse learned to treat an unknown disease
Linda Aiken of the School of Nursing said short staffing in hospitals has been exacerbated by the pandemic. “Chronic understaffing in hospitals and chaotic and inefficient work environments put nurses in a very poor position to be able to respond to the COVID surge because they were already reaching deep inside themselves in the normal context of care,” she said.
Penn In the News
Black and Hispanic Americans are most likely to miss health screenings due to COVID-19. A Penn physician is meeting the need
Carmen Guerra of the Perelman School of Medicine spoke about the structural and social barriers that have prevented communities of color from getting screened for cancer, even before the pandemic. Guerra and her colleagues have created a colorectal cancer screening navigation program to help remedy this disparity in West Philadelphia.
Penn In the News
Black babies are twice as likely to be born preterm. CHOP doctors are using COVID-19 to explore why
Heather Burris and Jaya Aysola of the Perelman School of Medicine spoke about the pandemic’s effects on preexisting preterm birth and prenatal care disparities.
Penn In the News
‘I don’t know where to move’: Philly immigrants who’ve lived through coups warn of the rise of fringe groups
Bulent Gultekin of the Wharton School said that compared to the coup he witnessed in Turkey 60 years ago, the recent attack on the U.S. Capitol was more like a “mob scene” than a coup. “It doesn’t mean that things will be the same or we’ll forget about this very quickly, it’s a very important lesson,” he said. “In a country where it’s divided and so many are polarized, this is always a problem in the long run.”