News

Samuel H. Preston (PSC/PARC) was quoted in a New York Times article about the intersections of race and increased mortality in the 21st century.

Mark V. Pauly, PSC & PARC Associate, was recently quoted in a Knowledge@Wharton article, "Will Walmart's Health Care Gamble Pay Off?" Listen to the Knowledge@Wharton
podcast episode. 

Mary Ersek, PARC Research Associate, is among the Penn Nursing collaborators working with the Veterans Health Administration researching how to improve the quality or life and end-of-life care for Veterans, read more about the partnership at Penn Today. (Image by Sarah Maycock)

Irma Elo received grant funding as part of the 2019 Making a Difference in Diverse Communities. Read more on the Penn Arts & Sciences website. 

Jere R. Behrman was recently awarded funding from NIH for his project "Foundational Cognitive Skills in Developing Countries: Early-Life Nutritional, Climatic and Policy Determinants and Impacts on Adolescent Education, Socio-emotional Competencies and Risky Behaviors.” 

Abstract: Early undernutrition and climate variation are widespread in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and claimed to have long-lasting consequences. However, there is little population-based evidence about mechanisms through which early-life undernutrition and climatic variations lead to poorer adolescent and adult outcomes and whether early-life deficits may be mitigated. This project investigates impacts of undernutrition and climatic variations on foundational cognitive skills (FCS), importantly including executive function (EF). The project uses unique data on FCS collected in Ethiopia and Peru as part of the Young Lives Study (YLS), the largest multi-country cohort dataset on childhood poverty and wellbeing in LMICs. The analysis promises significant contributions for (1) deeper understanding of how early-life nutrition, climatic variations and other events affect FCS, (2) how policy interventions can help mitigate the effects of early childhood poverty through affecting EF in contexts of two very different countries, (3) what are the impacts of late childhood FCS on adolescent outcomes.

Molly Candon and co-author Melissa Ostroff recently wrote two posts on the LDI Policy$ense blog. Read the first blog post Fast-tracking Behavioral Health Care and second one Beyond Physicians: Interdisciplinary Teams in Integrated Care.

Mark D. Neumann, PARC Research Associate, was recently quoted in a Penn Medicine News article about post surgery prescription of opioids. The article discusses the findings of paper written by Neumann and co-authors that was published in JAMA Network Open, "Opioid Prescribing After Surgery in the United States, Canada, and Sweden."

A new article co-authored by Harsha Thirumurthy, PARC Research Associate, was recently published in JAMA Network Open. Read more about "Effect of Prices, Distribution Strategies, and Marketing on Demand for HIV Self-testing in Zimbabwe: A Randomized Clinical Trial" on the LDI website.

Collin Payne, GGD alumn, and Michel Guillot, PSC & PARC Research Associate, recently introduced a new way of measuring life expectancy accounting for the historical mortality conditions that today's older generations lived through. Read more about the study in Science Daily and check out the full article published in Population Studies.

New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Kulkarni, Vani, Veena Kulkarni, and Raghav Gaiha. 2019. "Trust in Hospitals-Evidence from India." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2019-27.

Research by PSC & PARC Associates Linda H. Aiken and Matthew D. McHugh shows that when nurses lack support and resources, the most vulnerable patients are at risk. Researchers found that one in five registered nurses reported frequently being unable to complete necessary patient care, leaving patients without comfort, conversation, and surveillance, and leaving nurses with high rates of burnout. Read more in Penn Today and Penn Nursing News.

PSC Associate Olivia S. Mitchell discusses what longer lifespans may mean for aging workers. Between ageism in hiring, a shaky Social Security system, and changes to rules regarding annuities, the future of retirement looks uncertain on Knowledge@Wharton podcast. “Since retirement planning is so nuanced and complicated, it would behoove many to work longer, save more, and expect less,” she says.

On Knowledge@Wharton and in a Penn Today article, PSC Associate Mark V. Pauly discusses the future of the Affordable Care Act, which is being reviewed by the courts. “I will be heartsick if it’s declared unconstitutional,” says Pauly. “My view is that you should be required to have health insurance just like you’re required to wear clothes in cold weather.” 

Research by PSC researcher, Angela Lee Duckworth, and co-authors was highlighted in Penn Today. In a study of 2,000 high schoolers supported by the Behavior Change for Good Initiative, students who gave motivational advice to younger pupils earned higher grades at the end of the academic quarter.

Irma T. Elo and Samuel H. Preston's research on life expectancy and non-Hispanic whites in the U.S. featured in Penn Today.

Research by PARC Associate Mark D. Neuman was cited in a discussion at the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee hearing focused on reauthorizing the nine-year-old Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). Read more here.

Michel Guillot, PSC & PARC Associate, was recently interviewed in Penn Today about a new paper published in Demographic Research. His work examines second-generation immigrants and mortality in France. "This work touches on whether the migrant advantage is transmitted. Here we give an example where it is not transmitted, and not only is it lost, but it's reversed," Guillot stated.

PSC Associate, Jason Schnittker, was quoted in a Pittsburg Post-Gazette about older adults being generally positive about their health as they age. “Older people expect some deterioration in health and aren’t thrown off course in the same way when it occurs,” says sociologist Jason Schnittker of the School of Arts and Sciences.

PSC & PARC Associates and Affiliates, Norma B. Coe, Pilar Gonalons-Pons, Rachel M. Werner, and Nancy A. Hodgson, joined top University of Pennsylvania health policy experts and members of the Penn class of 1969 a couple weeks ago on a panel with the Leonard Davis Institute.

Olivia S. Mitchell was quoted in a SavvyMoney article about social security. She says, "the Social Security "Breakeven" age 'induces people to think about the chance of dying too soon, rather than focusing them on what Social Security is best at – namely, protecting us against".

Courtney Boen was quoted in a Penn Today article about the United States having the worst maternal mortality rate of any developed country and that rate steadily rising, increasing by 26% between 2000 and 2014. Experts across the University are addressing the crisis head-on, creating programs and conducting research to understand and address the role that social determinants, socioeconomics, and racism play.

Hans-Peter Kohler was quoted in a Time Magazine article about reasons for the declining birth rates in the country.

Kevin G. Volpp and co-authors published an article in Harvard Business Review about gamification programs in behavioural health.

French Institute for Demographic Studies Director (INED) Magda Tomasini, and Population Studies Center of the University of Pennsylvania (Penn PSC) Director Herbert L. Smith, have signed a 3-year partnership agreement. 

On the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Science Friction” podcast, PSC associate Sarah Tishkoff discusses the limits of genetic-testing databases. Tishkoff says that to provide accurate results, DNA-testing companies need to improve both their databases’ representation of ethnically diverse populations and their ability to distinguish between ethnic groups.

PSC & PARC associate Olivia S. Mitchell discusses her research on the role of annuities in retirement planning on an episode of the Knowledge@Wharton podcast.

PSC Associates, Kevin G. Volpp and Atheendar Venkataramani, are being honoured at the 2019 Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM) Annual Meeting. Volpp is receiving The John M. Eisenberg National Award for Career Achievement in Research and Venkataramani, the Best Published Research Paper of the Year. Read more on LDI's website.

Jason Karlawish said a recent study on aging and scam awareness doesn’t prove a link between susceptibility and cognitive decline in seniors in the Associated Press. However, Karlawish says, the results “should be a call to action to health care systems, the financial services industry and their regulators.”

Angela Lee Duckworth and co-authors published an article in the Washington Post about how our environment influence our self-control.

A new article in Nature mentions the need for racial and ethnic diversity in the groups of people studied in genomics research. “It would be very nice if there was one set of guidelines that fit every population, but not all groups are the same,” says Sarah Tishkoff, a human geneticist who pioneered efforts to work with African populations in genomics.

Angela Lee Duckworth just received the College of Liberal and Professional Studies Award for Distinguished Teaching in Professional Graduate Programs

Jordan Weiss was awarded a fellowship from the Alzheimer's Association to present work on explaining trends in dementia incidence at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference this summer. 

“There’s a lot of lower-level head trauma out there that no one knows the consequence of,” says John Q. Trojanowski of PARC in a New York Times article. Trojanowski plans to submit a research paper in the coming months on people who have suffered traumatic brain injury. “We are looking at people with traumatic brain injury, football players, rugby players, some people who fell off bikes.”

PSC & PARC associate Heather Schofield led a group of Wharton students on a four-day trip to Ethiopia during spring break for a close-up look at the African nation’s health, agricultural, business, and political sectors. Students said the Global Modular Course experience gave them perspectives they never could have found in a book. Read more in Penn Today.

PSC & PARC researcher, Linda H. Aiken, the Claire M. Fagin Leadership Professor in Nursing, and Director, Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research (CHOPR), was recently awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RSCI) Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery.

In a commentary in the journal Cell and articles in PBS News Hour and Penn Today, PARC researcher Sarah Tishkoff and co-authors, shine a light on the lack of ethnic diversity represented in genomic studies and on the consequences for health and medicine. “Leaving entire populations out of human genetic studies is both scientifically damaging and unfair,” Tishkoff says.

On the Knowledge@Wharton, Mark V. Pauly, of PSC & PARC, and Genevieve Kanter of the Perelman School of Medicine discuss the impact of changes to the Stark Law, which prevents doctors from self-referral, and the effectiveness of accountable care organizations (ACO).“I would be even more enthusiastic about ACOs if it had been shown that they actually improve the coordination of care,” says Kanter.

Can closing homeless encampments help Philadelphia’s opioid problem? A report authored by Dennis Culhane and co-authors and an article in Penn Today shows that shuttering two camps led to many new addiction-treatment slots and some successful placements in permanent or temporary housing. Many challenges remain, however, including a shortage of housing options.

A paper co-authored by Olivia S. Mitchell was quoted in a Barron's article about restirement investments.

PARC researcher, Sarah Tishkoff's research Limits of long-term selection against Neandertal introgression was reported in a Penn Today article. Tishkoff works with former research associate Laura Scheinfeldt and former grad student Sameer Soi,to offer a new look at African genetic diversity, with data from 50 populations. Among other insights, their analysis suggests that hunter-gatherer groups, a few of whom speak languages involving clicks, share a common ancestry despite being geographically far-flung.

Hans-Peter Kohler, PSC & PARC research associate, discusses the recent decline in U.S. birth rates on a Marketplace podcast. “At the level we are observing it in the U.S., it is not a problem. If the U.S. had South Korean, Japanese, or Italian fertility rates, arguably, the pressure to do something about this might be higher,” says Kohler.

Omnia interviewed Joseph Kable, PSC & PARC researcher and Baird Term Professor of Psychology, on why humans can’t seem to make the commitment to slow climate change.

PARC Associate Sarah Tishkoff offered commentary on a recent study on skin pigmentation in Latin American people in a Science article. Previous research on pigmentation “has been done on Europeans, where ironically we don’t see a lot of variation,” she said. “One of the last frontiers has been, ‘What about East Asians and Native Americans?’”

Check out the New Years message from Richard Hodes, Director, National Institute on Aging.