The 2025 AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting poster displays featured more than 1,000 presentations sprawling across the Minneapolis Convention Center expo area. They covered a broad range of health services research topics. (Photos: Hoag Levins)
The posters detailed the latest studies in areas including HSR workforce development, HSR resources & methods, public & population health, health equity, Medicare and Medicaid, Access to care, and building healthy communities.
Celsea Tibbitt, PhD, RN, LDI Associate Fellow and Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research at Penn Nursing, points to her poster study. It found hospitals that performed significantly better than their benchmarked peers on spontaneous vaginal birth rates had better nurse staffing and nurse-physician relationships.
LDI Associate Fellow and Postdoctoral Fellow at the Penn School of Nursing Hyunmin (David) Yu, PhD, RN, explains his poster about the role that geographic location and state health care policies play in hospitals’ participation in health care equity indicies to Felicity Ratway, PhD of Oregon State University.
LDI Senior Fellow Aaron Schwartz, MD, PhD, of the Perelman School talks with Kao-Ping Chua, MD, PhD, of University of Michigan, and David Auerbach, PhD, of the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission about his study’s findings that risk-based contract adoption was not consistently associated with changes in the utilization or reduction in Medicare Advantage low-value service use.
Stephanie Agu, BA, a 2024 Penn Summer Undergraduate Mentored Research (SUMR) Scholar who co-authored the work with LDI Senior Fellow Ingrid Nembhard, PhD, MS, of the Wharton School explains her poster on “near misses” in health care delivery to current SUMR Scholar Khadija Seck of Penn, Pragat Patel of Penn, and Jesse Tanenbaum, PhD, of the Duke University School of Medicine. Agu begins medical school at UT Southwestern Medical School in Dallas in the fall.
2025 SUMR Scholars Daniel Carrera Mora of Williams College and Ysabella Perez of Penn wander the poster hall.
Nicholas Myers, a 2024 SUMR Scholar and University of Georgia graduate, Victor Gelpi, a 2025 SUMR Scholar from Columbia University, and Andrew Lu, a 2024 SUMR Scholar from Penn stroll the poster expo hall.
LDI Associate Fellow and PhD student at Penn Nursing’s Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research (CHOPR) Domenique Villani, MPH, RN, explains her team’s study of Scotland’s Health and Care Act that was implemented in 2024 to establish nursing staffing standards. The conclusion was that the Scottish system may be too complex to be recommended widely.
LDI Associate Fellow and Clinical Fellow in the Department of Surgery at the Perelman School Joseph Kern, MD, studied a model allowing eligible patients to enroll in emergency Medicaid during a hospital admission, opening a route to their longer-term Medicaid coverage.
LDI Associate Fellow Alexandra Maye, MSN, RN, a PhD Student at Penn Nursing’s Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research (CHOPR) explains her study of the use of virtual nursing in ten states. The work concludes that further investments in on-site bedside nurses may enhance the effectiveness of nursing care delivery via digital channels.
LDI Associate Fellow Aidan Crowley, a MD-PhD student at the Perelman and Wharton Schools explains her study examining the allocation of payments to accountable care organizations adjusted according to the Area Deprivation Index (ADI). It concluded that changes to risk adjustment may shift resources away from ACOs that serve populations with the worst outcomes.
A co-author on this study of Medicare Advantage risk-based contracts and utilization with LDI Senior Fellow Aaron Schwartz, MD, PhD, Tim Bulat, MPH, of the Actuarial Research Corporation explains that despite value-based reimbursement efforts, the fee-for-service model still dominates the market.
LDI Senior Fellow Sara Handley, MD, MSCE, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School discussed her team’s assessment of the accuracy of the American Hospital Association (AHA) Annual Survey of Hospitals data used in national studies of hospital capabilities. It details limited data accuracy in maternal and neonatal care.
The poster of LDI Senior Fellow Jane Muir, PhD, APRN, an Assistant Professor at both the Perelman and Penn Nursing Schools, details an analysis of what hospital nurses say helps or hinders the delivery of quality care to socially disadvantaged patients. It recommends the improvement of workforce diversity, strengthening of community resources, and tailoring of cultural competency education.
LDI Senior Fellow Bob Burke, MD, MS, an Associate Professor of Medicine at the Perelman School and Syama Patel, MPH, of the Perelman School discuss their study of Skilled Nursing Facility Value-Based Purchasing (SNF VPB) model that is testing pay-for-performance incentives in nursing homes across the country.
Yueming Zhao, MPH, Statistical Analyst at the Penn Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics (CHIBE) who co-authored the work with LDI Senior Fellow Amol Navathe, MD, PhD, of the Perelman School, explains their study of the overlap between mandatory and voluntary value-based kidney care model participation and home dialysis use.
LDI Associate Fellow and Fellow in the National Clinical Scholars Program at the Perelman School of Medicine Kaustav Shah, MD, explained his team’s finding that 38% of the 2,881 acute care hospitals surveyed were using artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML) predictive models.
