Executive Director of the Penn Medicine Center for Health Care Innovation and LDI Senior Fellow David Asch, MD, MBA, has been named the 2018 recipient of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s David E. Rogers Award.

Sponsored by both RWJF and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the annual award recognizes “a medical school faculty member who has made major contributions to improving the health and health care of the American people.”

The award, originally established in memory of David E. Rogers, the first President of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, will be presented at the November 4 AAMC Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas.

Social justice and behavioral economics
“Combining his passion for social justice with behavioral economics,” the AAMC said, “Dr. Asch’s work has elevated the standard of health care delivery in America and advanced the education of future physicians.”

The RWJF/AAMC announcement notes “Early in his career, Dr. Asch directed a series of high-profile studies that demonstrated the ethical failings that plague the care of patients in intensive care units — work that ultimately informed several Supreme Court decisions on end-of-life care. His subsequent research on the consequences of genetic testing for cystic fibrosis and for mutations in breast cancer susceptibility (BRCA) genes that affect breast and ovarian cancers was influential in the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008.”

“As executive director of the Penn Medicine Center for Health Care Innovation, Dr. Asch continues to test and develop creative approaches to improving patient care. Using techniques from industry, his team has created new care models to improve the reach, cost, and quality of dozens of common clinical interventions, including hypertension management, antibiotic stewardship, colorectal screening, and appointment scheduling.”

Medical education studies
“Dr. Asch has also made many impressive contributions in the area of medical education. His work demonstrating how medical residency programs can be evaluated by assessing the outcomes of patients was instrumental in the design of the new accreditation standards for graduate medical education. He is also the principal investigator of iCOMPARE, the largest NIH-funded randomized trial of medical education, which is studying alternative duty hours for residents to assess the impact on education, sleep, and patient safety. In 2009, he was awarded the Alpha Omega Alpha Robert J. Glaser Distinguished Teacher Award by the AOA and the AAMC.”

University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine Dean J. Larry Jameson, MD, PhD, said “When I step back and think about David Asch’s contributions, I see in him the kind of contagious and impish enthusiasm for a future social order that is better than what we have now. I see effectiveness in discovery, in policy change, and in the development of human capacity to continue this work.”

Asch, who previously served as Executive Director of Penn’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI) for 14 years, graduated from Harvard and earned his MD from Weill Cornell Medical College. As a Penn student he received an MBA in Decision Science and Health Care Management at the Wharton School and was a RWJF Clinical Scholar, the latter being a national program originally started by David E. Rogers. He is currently a Professor of both Medicine and Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the Perelman School and Health Care Management and Operations, Information and Decisions at the Wharton School.