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Penn LDI’s Aaron Schwartz Wins 2025 Alice S. Hersh Emerging Leader Award

AcademyHealth Honor Recognizes Early Career Researchers of Exceptional Potential

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Aaron Schwartz, MD, PhD, LDI Senior Fellow and Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, has won the 2025 AcademyHealth Alice S. Hersh Emerging Leader Award.

The prestigious honor recognizes professionals early in their careers who demonstrate exceptional promise for future contributions to the field of health services research. This distinction not only acknowledges the recipient’s potential, but also serves as a validation of research that has been both impactful and forward-thinking.

Aaron Schwartz, MD, PhD

The award will be presented June 9 at the AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Alice Hersh

The award is named in honor of Alice Hersh, who in 1982 became the founding Executive Director of the Association for Health Services Research, the organization that later changed its name to AcademyHealth. In a memorial written after her death in 1997, HSR journal editor Stephen Shortell, PhD, wrote that in Hersh’s 15 pioneering years at the AHSR helm, she “took the organization from ground zero and built it into the most respected and visible association representing health services and policy research in the world.”

As part of her relentless campaign to expand the presence and influence of HSR scientists, Hersh was especially interested in nurturing the discipline’s most promising new researchers. Toward that end, in 1986, she conceived and launched the annual award that was posthumously renamed in her honor.

As a health economist, Schwartz conducts research on measuring and improving the efficiency of U.S. health care delivery. His research is focused on the private provision of federal health care benefits, including Medicare Advantage and VA Community Care, low-value medical services, insurer coverage restrictions, and alternative health care financing arrangements.

VA Medical Center

Schwartz maintains an active primary care practice at the Corporal Michael J. Crescenz VA Medical Center in Philadelphia, where he serves as a core investigator at the VA Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion.

He is an alumnus of Swarthmore College, the Harvard MD-PhD Program, and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Residency Program in Primary Care and Population Medicine.

Previous Penn LDI Winners

Schwartz is the latest LDI Senior Fellow to receive the award. Past winners include Senior Fellows Shekinah Fashaw-Walters, PhD, MSHP, Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy; Rachel M. Werner, MD, PhD, Executive Director of LDI and Professor at both the Wharton and Perelman Schools; Kevin Volpp, MD, PhD, Director of the Center for Health Incentives and Behavior Economics and Professor at both Wharton and the Perelman Schools; and David A. Asch, MD, MBA, University of Pennsylvania Senior Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and Professor at both Wharton the the Perelman Schools.

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