SEATTLE — Held on the first evening of the AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting (ARM), the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI) party is a long established tradition at the national health services research gathering. It was held this year at Blueacre Seafood in downtown Seattle where it brought together LDI’s Senior, Associate and Adjunct Fellows along with a list of luminaries from elsewhere across the world of HSR.

This year’s party celebrated LDI Senior Fellow Mitesh Patel‘s selection as AcademyHealth’s 2018 New Investigator Award winner. LDI Executive Director Daniel Polsky, PhD (above, left) congratulated Patel on the honor that recognizes health services researchers who demonstrate “exceptional promise of future contributions.” Above, right, are Patel’s mentors and collaborators, both of whom are also past winners of the same award, David Asch, MD, MBA, Executive Director of the Penn Medicine Center for Health Care Innovation (CHCI) and LDI Senior Fellow and Kevin Volpp, MD, PhD, Executive Director of the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics (CHIBE) and LDI Senior Fellow. Like his mentors, Patel, MD, MBA, is a faculty member at both Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine and the Wharton School’s Department of Health Care Management as well as a physician at the Philadelphia Crescenz VA Medical Center.

Penn Nursing School’s party was held in the same restaurant and here (above, left), Linda Aiken, PhD, RN, Penn Nursing School Professor and Director of the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research (CHOPR) chats with Jeffrey Silber, MD, PhD, Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School and Health Care Management at the Wharton School. Above, right are Rachel Werner, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine and Director of Health Policy and Outcomes Research at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine; Emily Shields, LDI Executive Assistant; and Tamara Konetzka, PhD, Professor of Health Services Research at the University of Chicago’s Department of Public Health Services. Aiken, Silber and Werner are LDI Senior Fellows.

Above, left are Charlene Wong, MD, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Duke University School of Medicine and former LDI Senior Fellow and University of Pennsylvania RWJF Clinical Scholar; Dave Chokshi, MD, Clinical Associate Professor at the Department of Population Health in NYU Langone School of Medicine; and Ashish Jha, MD, MPH, Senior Associate Dean for Research Translation and Global Strategy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Above, right are Gaëlle Beltran-Gremaud, LDI Managing Director; Emily Shields, LDI Executive Assistant; and David Asch of Penn Medicine.

Above, left are Charlene Wong; Aaron Schwartz, MD, PhD, internal medical resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Zirui Song, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School; Kevin Volpp of Penn Medicine; and Renuka Tipirneni, MD, MSc, Assistant Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan. Above, right are Renuka Tipirneni and Ashok Reddy, MD, MSHP, former Penn RWJF Clinical Scholar and LDI Senior Fellow, now an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the University of Washington Division of General Internal Medicine in Seattle.

Above, left are Joanne Levy, MBA, MCP, Deputy Director of LDI and Founding Director of the Summer Undergraduate Minority Research (SUMR) program and Preethi Rao, PhD, Associate Policy Researcher at RAND and former Wharton PhD student and LDI Associate Fellow. Above, right are Carson Clark, Communications Strategist at the Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion at Philadelphia’s Crescenz VA Medical Center and Gary Lees, ARNP, Clinical Coordinator of Mental Health Intensive Case Management at the Miami VA Medical Center.

Above, left are Penn LDI Summer Undergraduate Minority Research (SUMR) Scholars Janiece Strange of Morgan State University and Joanna Ferguson, Penn School of Dental Medicine; SUMR Program Director Joanne Levy (behind with placard); Penn medical students Mariam Olujide and Alexis Phillips who are HSR Summer Scholars at the Penn Medicine Health Services Research Summer Scholars Program. Above, right are LDI SUMR Scholars Mohamed Abdirisak of Indiana University, Zara Wermers of Tufts University, Alec Hilton of Washington University in St. Louis, and Amanda Carrillo-Perez of Swarthmore College.

Taking a break from their whirlwind of event organization and management tasks are (above, left) LDI Executive Assistant Emily Shields and Safa Browne, LDI Research Coordinator and Coordinator of the LDI SUMR Scholars program. Above, right are LDI Associate Director of Health Policy Rebecka Rosenquist, MSc, and her sister Stina Rosenquist.

Above, left are Amanda Letheren, MPH, a DrPH student at the University of Tennessee Knoxville’s Department of Public Health; Gerald Kominski, PhD, Professor of Health Services at the UCLA School of Public Health; LDI Deputy Director Joanne Levy; and Robert Lieberthal, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Health at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Above, right are Megan Pellegrino-Zubricky, MLA, LDI Multimedia Manager and Naomi Zewde, PhD, Post Doctoral Research Scientist at the Columbia University School of Social Work.

Above, left are Miriam Laugesen, PhD, Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health; Oliver Fein, MD, Professor of Clinical Healthcare Policy and Research, and Associate Dean for Affiliations at Weill Cornell Medical College; and Jack Needleman, PhD, Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. Above, right, Wharton Health Care Management PhD student Benjamin Chartock and newly-minted Wharton Health Care Management PhD Amelia Bond discuss an issue from an AcademyHealth session. Both are LDI Associate Fellows.

Above, left are Megan McCarthy-Alfano, LDI Project Manager; Puja Upadhyay, LDI Policy Coordinator; and Amanda Letheren. Above, right are LDI SUMR Scholars Francesco DeMayo and Tim Wang, both of Penn.

Above, left, enjoying a dated photo op are Jeffrey Silber and David Asch. Above, right, are LDI SUMR Scholars Christine Olagun-Samuel of Penn, Audrey Fretzin of Penn, Ayomide Ojebuoboh of Boston University, and Nahnsan Guseh of Syracuse University.