Rachel M. Werner, MD, PhD, who transformed the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics into a more influential and financially secure force in national health policy while building a nationally recognized research career focused on improving nursing home care, is stepping down June 30, 2026 after seven years as LDI’s Executive Director.

As the nation’s health care system confronts major policy, funding, and delivery challenges, Werner is returning full-time to research, teaching, and clinical practice at Penn and the Philadelphia VA.

She leaves behind a legacy as an extraordinary institutional leader, organizational builder, and health policy scholar.

First Woman to Lead Penn LDI

The first woman and first physician-economist to lead LDI in its history, Werner was honored on June 11, 2026 at a farewell celebration at Penn’s Perry World House, where colleagues praised both her leadership and her contributions to health services research.

“Seven years later, LDI is more influential, substantially more financially secure, and more deeply woven into national health policy than it has ever been at any point in its history,” said David Asch, MD, MBA, Professor at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine and Wharton School, Penn Senior Vice President for Strategic Initiatives, and a former LDI Executive Director.

Werner, who began her career in medicine and health economics in 1994 as a Penn medical student, went on to become a professor, acclaimed mentor, nationally renowned health services researcher, and visionary administrator at LDI, a Penn hub of nearly 600 Penn researchers who investigate how U.S. health care is funded, organized, managed, and quality-controlled.

Policy Influence

In his announcement, Penn Vice Provost for Research David Meaney, PhD, noted that “Under Rachel’s leadership, LDI became a singularly effective force in national health policy. In 2025 alone, LDI Fellows produced a Senate-requested analysis of the mortality impacts of the budget reconciliation bill; provided testimony before the Senate Finance Committee and Philadelphia City Council; briefed Governor Shapiro’s Office and the Pennsylvania General Assembly; and authored nearly 50 op-eds reaching millions of readers through the New York Times, Washington Post, STAT News, NPR, and beyond.”

A watershed moment in Werner’s LDI tenure occurred 10 months after she assumed her new position, when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, triggering widespread shutdowns, public anxiety, and political turmoil as the disease began its massive disruptions across the national health care system.

Kevin Mahoney, MBA, Chief Executive Officer of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, told the Perry World House audience how he felt a sense of severe loss when suddenly “there was no community” as the pandemic hit and the previously teeming offices and corridors of Penn Medicine facilities went quiet.

Institutional Leader

“So, who did I call? I called Rachel,” said Mahoney. “We took a long walk and talked about the need to continue convening our multidisciplinary researchers and for LDI to play a lead role in that. One of the ideas we came up with was the LDI-Penn Medicine Research Laboratory, a new initiative focused on investigating the most important areas of interest to Penn Medicine’s operations and strategic direction during the pandemic and after.”

“I think that sent a message to everyone that the health system and its people are still standing and that the pandemic was not going to ruin our culture. That was a really critical message,” Mahoney continued. “So, one legacy of Rachel is that we’ve got to keep those interdisciplinary discussions going.”

In the same spirit, Werner returned to her office rethinking LDI’s traditional convening practices that regularly brought up to 60 researchers into its auditorium. With those in-person gatherings now shut down, she had her staff begin devising a new format using BlueJeans and later Zoom to create a virtual seminar series that brought together multidisciplinary researchers across the U.S. to tackle urgent pandemic challenges ranging from PPE shortages, hospital surge capacity, and nursing home outbreaks to telemedicine expansion, health equity, and the rapidly evolving science of testing, treatment, and vaccine allocation.

Communicator

Begun in the spring of 2020, those virtual LDI sessions drew thousands of viewers from across the country and today remain the standard format for many LDI seminars, as well as one of its most effective vehicles for influencing policy. In 2025 alone, the virtual events attracted close to 10,000 attendees nationwide across the health care, government, academic, for- and non-profit sectors.

Dean of the Perelman School of Medicine Jonathan A. Epstein, MD, commended Werner for “taking over LDI at a very difficult time and going right in and through by your sheer will to raise academic standards consistently across your leadership. That has shown itself in the output from LDI along with your research at the top level nationally and internationally.”

He made particular note of Werner’s 2026 selection for the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM) John M. Eisenberg National Award for Career Achievements in Research.

Another of Werner’s administrative achievements was securing the financial futureof LDI’s Summer Undergraduate Mentored Research (SUMR) Program, co-founded in 2000 by Wharton’s Mark Pauly, PhD, and Joanne Levy, MBA, MCP. The program advances health equity in the health services research field by supporting and mentoring undergraduates interested in HSR and pursuing advanced degrees. In 2025, Werner secured a landmark $3.5 million gift from the Leonard and Sophie Davis Fund establishing the Davis Family SUMR Program Endowment Fund, which will provide permanent, long-term support for summer undergraduate research at LDI. Paired with a $1 million matching challenge, the effort ultimately raised over $5.5 million—the largest fundraising success in LDI’s history.

It is also an example of Werner’s career-long commitment to mentoring students, as poignantly underscored by the remarks of Paula Chatterjee, MD, MPH, now an Assistant Professor at the Perelman School and LDI Director of Innovation.

Beloved Mentor

Chatterjee cited three key moments when Werner influenced her professional path. As a medical student, she learned from Werner’s research how to frame policy problems and communicate solutions. Later, when she was considering her first faculty position at Penn and worried about succeeding as a young scholar, Werner provided the reassurance and support that defined Chatterjee’s understanding of true mentorship. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she said, watching Werner lead LDI through crisis gave her a lasting model of effective leadership.

“I’m one of those people who believes that people show themselves in times of uncertainty and crisis, and having a front-row seat to watching what that leadership looks like can transform the way that you think about leadership in the future. Watching Rachel did that for me,” Chatterjee said.

Another of Werner’s strengths, one that many academic researchers struggle with, is effective communication and an understanding of its importance in moving crucial research findings closer to policymakers and implementation.

Judith Long, MD, Chief of the Perelman School’s Division of General Internal Medicine, explained: “Rachel has worked hard to ensure that no LDI Fellow believes the work ends when the paper is published. She has championed op-eds, targeted engagement with the press, and conversations with policymakers. She has encouraged researchers to bring their findings to the public square and contribute to national debates, and in doing so, she has strengthened Penn’s ability to inform policy and expand the impact of our work beyond academia.”

And aside from encouragement, Werner’s LDI established a training course for its Senior Fellows—Amplify at LDI—that regularly brings them together with experts from the communications and media industries to provide hands-on training in the skills and tactics needed to engage effectively with mainstream newsrooms and policymakers.

In terms of her latest move, Werner is returning to the research agenda that first established her national reputation.

Award-Winning Researcher

Over the last two decades, Werner has developed a nationally recognized research program focused on how health care policies affect the way care is delivered. Using sophisticated techniques to analyze real-world data, she has helped determine whether policy changes actually cause improvements in patient care. Her studies have explored the unexpected side effects of programs designed to improve quality and were among the first to show that publicly reporting health care quality scores could unintentionally increase racial disparities in care.

Across her research career and her seven years leading Penn LDI, health equity has not been a side issue but a consistent organizing concern—especially in her work on how quality measurement, payment incentives, and health care financing can unintentionally widen or narrow disparities.

Her findings have appeared in leading medical and health policy journals, including the JAMA, Health Services Research, and Health Affairs. In addition to her research, Werner has played an active role in shaping policy. She served on the National Quality Forum’s Expert Panel on Risk Adjustment and Socioeconomic Status, advised the federal government on measuring health care quality and designing quality-improvement programs, and served on Pennsylvania’s Nursing Home Quality Improvement Task Force.

She is also a core investigator with the Veterans Affairs Health Services Research and Development Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion (CHERP). Her contributions have earned numerous honors. Beyond the SGIM Eisenberg Award mentioned earlier, these include AcademyHealth’s Alice Hersh New Investigator Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and the American Federation of Medical Research Outstanding Investigator Award. She is also a member of the National Academy of Medicine and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

As she steps away from the leadership of LDI, Werner leaves behind an organization that is larger, more influential, and more deeply engaged in national health policy than when she arrived. Yet her most enduring contribution may be the approach that has defined both her research and her leadership: a determination to look past assumptions, measure outcomes rigorously, and follow the evidence wherever it leads. Returning now to full-time research, she appears poised to continue asking the questions that have shaped her career—and, increasingly, the nation’s health policy debates.

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