Nine months after receiving a $3.5 million gift from the son of its founding benefactor, the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI) has reached a major philanthropic milestone, raising over $1 million to meet the matching challenge included in the original donation. This brings the total contribution to $5.5 million.

The initial gift from the Leonard & Sophie Davis Fund—the largest in LDI’s history—was designed to expand the Institute’s Summer Undergraduate Mentored Research (SUMR) program and bolster its initiatives aimed at increasing access to health insurance and health care. It did so by creating the Davis Family SUMR Program Endowment Fund, and also offered the $1 million match challenge with a September deadline.

Over 130 Donors

That challenge motivated and mobilized a community of over 130 former SUMR scholars, mentors, professors, Wharton alumni, the current and four former LDI Executive Directors, and others. Rachel M. Werner, LDI Executive Director, invited the institute’s former executive directors to join her in supporting this effort, and their generosity helped close out this remarkable campaign. They sent in their donations a few days before September’s end, topping the $1 million mark.

“Reaching our $1 million matching challenge is more than a milestone. It’s a reflection of the extraordinary community of SUMR supporters across the country who belief in our mission and the transformative power of the SUMR program,” said Werner. “I’m deeply grateful to every donor who stepped forward to amplify the impact of SUMR, advance equitable access to care, and inspire future leaders to drive positive change across the health care and health policy sectors.”

“Profoundly Inspired”

“I’m profoundly inspired by the community’s incredible response to this matching challenge. Founded to advance diversity in health services research, the SUMR program’s mission is strengthened by the many supporters joining the Leonard and Sophie Davis Fund in fortifying SUMR’s future, while elevating innovative research to expand access to health insurance and health care services,” said Alan Davis.

Established in 2001 and headquartered in San Francisco, the Leonard & Sophie Davis Fund is a private foundation making grants to organizations associated with health, education, and philanthropy. Alan Davis is its President and CEO and also Director of the Fund’s WhyNot Initiative focused on advocating for racial equity, safeguarding voting rights, and raising awareness of wealth inequality.

LDI, which was launched in 1967 with a founding gift by the late Leonard Davis—Alan S. Davis’ father—is the hub of the University of Pennsylvania’s health policy and health services research community. It supports more than 500 affiliated faculty and trainees who are Senior or Associate Fellows engaged in both research and mentorship of SUMR scholars.

Joint LDI-Wharton School Initiative

SUMR, a joint LDI/Wharton Health Care Management Department (HCM) initiative, was co-founded in 2000 by Wharton School Professor and LDI Senior Fellow Mark Pauly, PhD, and Joanne Levy, MBA, MCP, Administrator of the HCM PhD Program. At the time of its founding, it worked to introduce a more diverse group of undergraduates to the world of health services research, channeling them toward advanced degree programs in health care. Today, it continues to train the next generation of health services researchers, attracting dozens of undergraduate students from across the country to Penn’s campus each summer.

“It’s amazing to reflect on how much the SUMR program has grown over the past 26 years,” said Levy, who has led the program since it began. “We deeply appreciate the generosity of the Davis family and the Match donors and are thrilled about what this support will mean for future students.”

The three-month long paid internship includes an intense classroom curriculum taught by Penn faculty members. Each SUMR scholar is also taken under the wing by a faculty mentor and directly involved in health services research projects for the duration of the summer. More than 460 undergraduates have gone through the program since its inception.

“We didn’t realize when we started the SUMR program how many great students would be interested in being introduced to health services research,” said Pauly, a former Executive Director of LDI.

Contribution Goals

The overall $5.5 million Davis contribution has several goals. First, it allows LDI to increase the stipends of all SUMR scholars. It also funds five SUMR scholars who will focus on expanding health care access and provides the opportunity to expand the 12-week SUMR Program to 15 months for select students, with extended mentorship and training opportunities. Third, the gift supports new initiatives at LDI that seek to expand the research and dissemination of work focused on increasing access to health care.

Congratulating LDI on its challenge success, Dan Polsky, PhD, former LDI Executive Director and current Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School, said, “I was thrilled to contribute to this challenge given the many ways this SUMR program has impacted me and my field. I was a mentor for many SUMR students. As LDI Executive Director I also had the job of communicating the ways LDI has transformed the landscape of health policy—and it was clear to me that the SUMR program is at the top of LDI’s many great achievements.”

David Asch, MD, MBA, former LDI Executive Director, current Senior Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, and match challenge donor noted, “SUMR began as a small effort to open doors. It became one of LDI’s most powerful ways of building the future—by investing in who gets to create it.”

Two of the former SUMR scholars who were challenge donors commented on how important the program has been for them:

Naomi Adaniya, PhD, a 2005 SUMR scholar who is now Chief Data Officer (CDO) at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and faculty member at Ohio State University College of Public Health: “As a SUMR alum, I know firsthand how the SUMR program opens opportunities for undergraduate scholars to become the next generation of innovative leaders. SUMR played a pivotal role in my journey. Contributing to the matching challenge is my way of ensuring future students can benefit from the same transformative experience.”

Sunita Desai, PhD, a 2007 SUMR scholar who is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Population Health at NYU Langone: “The SUMR Program defined my future career. It showed me the impact we can have through rigorous, policy-relevant research, and it exposed me to the breadth of meaningful work that could be done to improve health and health care. The experience shaped my path as a researcher and continues to inspire the work I do today.”

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