Photo Page: Opening the LDI 50th Anniversary Symposium

Opening the gathering whose theme was “Shaping The Future of Health Care,” LDI Executive Director Daniel Polsky, PhD (above, left), said, “We’re here to honor the legacy of our founders by doing what LDI does best: bringing people together across disciplines and sectors to facilitate and catalyze new ideas and new solutions to the health care challenges of today and tomorrow.” Motioning to the packed room, University of Pennsylvania Provost and Chief Academic Officer Wendell Pritchett, JD, PhD (above, right), noted that, “LDI is one of the most important institutions at this very large institution and that’s saying something, so it’s not a surprise to me that we would have a full house. I want to congratulate LDI for 50 years of great work.”

Paul Starr‘s 45-minute presentation kept the audience spellbound as he recapped the new sections of the 2017 updated edition of his 1984 Pulitzer Prize Winning book, “The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The Rise of a Sovereign Profession & The Making of a Vast Industry. “Afterward (above, left), he signed copies of that new work and Genevieve Kanter, PhD, a Perelman School of Medicine Research Assistant Professor was one of the first in line to get one. Above, right, the corridors of the Inn at Penn were abuzz with meeting and greeting throughout the two days.

Breakout sessions were routinely standing-room only affairs, above, left, Anil Jain, MD, Chief Health Informatics Officer of IBM Watson health, was a panelist on the “Predicting the Future: Transforming Big Data Into Smarter Care” session. He discussed the growing inroads his company’s technology is making throughout the health care industry. Above, right, in the “System Redesign and The Health Care Workforce” panel led by Penn Nursing School Professor Linda Aiken, PhD, RN, were panelists Lawton Burns, PhD, MBA, Wharton School Professor of Health Care Management; David Meltzer, Professor and Chief of the Section of Hospital Medicine at the University of Chicago; Mary Naylor, PhD, RN, FAAN, Penn Professor of Nursing; and John Iglehart, a National Correspondent at the New England Journal of Medicine.

All the symposium’s sessions were marked by deep engagement and intense questions. Above, left, Cindy Mann, JD, a Partner at Manatt Health makes a point. Above, right, Jeffrey Lerner, PhD, Chief Executive Officer of ECRI Institute and an LDI Adjunct Senior Fellow, questions a panelist.

Previous Chief of Penn Medicine’s Division of General Internal Medicine and current Physician-in-Chief and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, Katrina Armstrong, MD (above, left), received the Penn LDI John M. Eisenberg Pioneer Award. She was a former colleague of the late Eisenberg whose legacy was also honored at the Symposium event. Above, right, are Eisenberg’s son Billy Eisenberg and his wife of 32 years, DD Eisenberg, on stage with Perelman School Professor J. Sanford Schwartz. Schwartz is also a former Executive Director of LDI [1989-1998].

Continuing the panel discussions even after the panel was over are Michael Chernew, PhD (above, left), a Wharton alum who is now Professor of Health Care Policy and the Director of the Health Markets and Regulation Lab at Harvard Medical School and Ingrid Nembhard, PhD, MS an Associate Professor of Public Health Policy and Associate Director of the Health Care Management Program at Yale University.

Addressing the audience in the Drug Pricing panel is Scott Ramsey, MD, PhD (above, left), a Wharton alum and Director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center at the University of Washington. Speaking as a panelist on the Strategies to Advance Population Health panel (above, right) was Dawn Alley, PhD, Director of Prevention and Population Health Group at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

Heading up the Strategies to Advance Population Health panel was (above, left, foreground) David Grande, MD, MPA, an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine and Director of Policy at LDI. Other panel members (l to r) were Nicole Lurie, MD, MSPH, former Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); Giridhar Mallya, MD, MSHP, a Senior Policy Officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Dawn Alley, PhD; and Meena Seshamani, MD, PhD, Director of Clinical Performance Improvement at MedStar Health. Above, right, in discussions with Wharton School Professor of both Health Care Management and Insurance and Risk Management Patricia Danzon, PhD, are CareScience Vice President Eugene Kroch, PhD, and David Brailer, MD, PhD, Professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard University. (in distant background) Orit Even-Shoshan, MS, Associate Director of the Center for Outcomes Research at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).

Focused on a panelist presentation is Penn Nursing School Professor and Director of the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research, Linda Aiken, PhD, RN (above, left). Above, right, Perelman School of Medicine Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine Judith Long, MD, heads up the “Leveraging Innovative Health Care Models to Serve Vulnerable Populations” panel. To her right are panelist Sindhu Srinivas, MS, MSCE, Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Perelman; and Anand Shah, MD, MSHP, Chief Clinical Officer and EVP at Pieces Technologies.

At the “Future Landscape of Children’s Health” panel was moderator David Rubin, MD (above, left, foreground). Other members are (l to r) Omar Woodard, MPA, Executive Director of GreenLight Philadelphia; Cindy Mann, JD, Partner at Manatt Health; and Ahaviah Glaser, JD, Director of Health Policy at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). (Above, right) Vanderbilt University Associate Professor of Health Policy David Stevenson, PhD chats with Wharton School Health Care Management Lecturer, John Whitman, MBA.