Penn LDI – Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics

Ezekiel Emanuel is featured in an Information Week article focused on how health IT infrastructure is a crucial element in the effort to reduce health care costs. Emanuel is Penn's Vice Provost for Global Initiatives and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy.

LDI Senior Fellow Howard Kunreuther is featured in a Knowledge@Wharton article about the implications of a Congressionally authorized study of the potential role of risk-based premiums and means-tested vouchers in the high-hazard insurance market. Kunreuther, PhD, is co-director of Wharton's Risk Management and Decision Processes Center. He is also co-author with…

A study of the social impact of "greening" vacant lots in inner-city neighborhoods led by LDI Senior Fellow Eugenia C. Garvin is the subject of a Philadelphia Inquirer feature story. "Our theory is that transforming vacant lots from a space overgrown with vegetation and filled with trash to a clean…

LDI Senior Fellow Raina Merchant, MD, and her August 6 MyHeartMap awards ceremony were the subject of an ABC Channel 6 news feature. The event celebrated the winners of the contest that documented the location of more than 1,500 automated electronic defibrillators (AEDs) in Philadelphia. Included in the audience were people…

In a New England Journal of Medicine article co-authored with Joseph Antos and Gail Wilensky, LDI Senior Fellow Mark Pauly says the Affordable Care Act's payment provisions and pilot projects fail to address a flawed financing system whose incentives promote more spending, not better spending.

"In a market-based approach," they write,…

A group of 23 health economists and other health policy authorities led by Ezekiel Emanuel has authored an article in the New England Journal of Medicine setting out an 11-point plan to contain national health care costs. In the conclusion they write, "Although many in the health industry perceive that it…

In a CNN.com interview with FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, Ezekiel Emanuel argued that "personalized medicine is a myth" and characterized excited public discussion of the potential of population-wide individual gene-based medicine as "hyperbolic." He said tailoring medical treatments to individual characteristics of each patient is both overly optimistic and cost-prohibitive and likened…

A new study by LDI Senior Fellow Linda Aiken and three other researchers links nursing burnout to increased rates of hospital-acquired infections. Published in the August issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the work was conducted at Penn's Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research, an institution headed…

LDI Senior Fellow Charles Branas is featured in an article in Mother Jones magazine about how urban greening projects may serve as a violence prevention tool. The piece focuses on the findings that large scale urban garden initiatives have altered the crime rates in some of the poorest neighborhoods in cities…

Quoted in a Reuters article, LDI Senior Fellow James Coyne criticized a new study suggesting a link between ovarian cancer survival odds and comforting family emotional experiences. It is "strictly a correlational study," he said. "Correlations do not establish causality." Coyne is director of Penn's Behavioral Oncology Program and a…

Writing in an ABC News post, LDI Senior Fellow Jason Karlawish discusses a new study that found many elderly individuals have biomarker patterns that are neither normal nor abnormal for Alzheimer's. He said the findings underscore the "uncharted territory" confronting researchers who hope to find clear biomarkers for the early…

An article in the New England Journal of Medicine on "automated hovering" by LDI Senior Fellows David Asch, Ralph Muller and Kevin Volpp has garnered widespread press pickup since its publication in June. The NEJM piece provides an update on the new technologies being used to influence health behaviors during the…

When hospital consolidations merge in already-concentrated areas, dramatic price increases of as much as 20 percent result, according to a new brief co-authored by LDI Senior Fellow Robert Town and published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Town, PhD, MA, is a Wharton School associate professor of health care management.

The Washington Post  features an article on Ezekiel Emanuel's new eight-week online video lecture course about Health Policy and the Affordable Care Act accessible through the University of Pennsylvania's Coursera system. Emanuel, a former White House Advisor and one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act, is Penn's Vice Provost…

In his latest Time.com "Medical Insider" column, LDI Senior Fellow, Zachary Meisel writes about the "July Effect" and how both inexperience and experience can cause physicians to make mistakes. He writes, "July is when the new interns -- fresh out of medical school -- start work. It’s also when…

LDI Senior Fellow Brian Strom is featured in a Reuters article about the latest findings linking physician electronic records use to fewer malpractice claims. The latest study found that physicians using the new digital systems had an 84% lower chance of being sued. Strom, Penn's Executive Vice Dean for Institutional Affairs…

Writing in the latest Issue of JAMA, Ezekiel Emanuel presents a case for the moral duty of Americans to purchase health insurance. A former White House Adviser and one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act, Emanuel is now a Penn Vice Provost and chair of the Department of…