PSC News

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, PARC Research Associate and Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the Perelman School of Medicine, was recently quoted in a Knowledge@Wharton article, "Why Addressing Social Factors Could Improve U.S. HealthCare." 

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. More »

New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Greenwood, Jeremy, Nezih Guner, and Karen Kopecky. 2019. "The Wife's Protector: The Effect of Contraception on Marriage during the 20th Century." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2019-28. 

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.

New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Huang, Zhiyong, and Fabrice Kämpfen. 2019. "Assessing (and Addressing) Reporting Heterogeneity in Visual Analogue Scales (VAS) with an Application to Gender Difference in Quality of Life." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2019-26.

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. More »

PARC Associate Sarah Tishkoff is featured on WHYY for a recent guest lecture she gave at New Jersey private school on the social construction of race as a biological category. "I feel like we have to talk about [race] because if we don’t, it’s just going to promote misunderstanding.”

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. More »

Pamela Z. Cacchione, PARC Research Associate, was recently quoted in an article about why eldery and older populations are particularly vulnerable in an emergency evacuation in The New Orleans Advocate .

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. More »

New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Pandey, Manoj, Vani Kulkarni, and Raghav Gaiha. 2019. "Non-communicable Diseases and Depression: Evidence from South Africa." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2019-25.

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 t More »

PSC Associate Daniel Aldana Cohen and PSC Affiliate Kevin Ummel published Follow the Carbon: The Case for Neighborhood-Level Carbon Footprints, a policy digest with Penn's Kleinman Center for Energy Policy.

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

PSC and PARC Associate Olivia S. Mitchell authored an article in The Hill about the Butch Lewis Act currently before congress.

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.

A new study published in PLOS Medicine by Atheendar Venkataramani, PSC & PARC Associate, focuses on how affirmative action bans reduce the chances of underrepresented students’ admission to college and may increase their likelihood of smoking or drinking to excess. More »

Michel Guillot, PSC & PARC Associate, was recently interviewed in Penn Today about a new paper published in More »

New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Amin, Vikesh, Jere Behrman, Jason Fletcher, Carlos Flores, Alfonso Flores-Lagunes, and Hans-Peter Kohler. 2019. "Mental Health, Schooling Attainment and Polygenic Scores: Are There Significant Gene-Environment Associations?." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2019-24.

PSC Associate, Jason Schnittker, was quoted in a Pittsburg Post-Gazette about older adults being generally positive about their health as they age. More »

PARC Associate Sarah Tishkoff counters a controversial theory which claims that race-based genetic variants correlate to advances in human culture in a Wired article. “That doesn’t mean somebody won’t find something some day. More »

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.

Research by Linda H. Aiken and Matthew D. McHugh was quoted in a New York Times article about the business of healthcare and its negative effects on healthcare providers.

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".

Olivia S. Mitchell has been listed as one of Worth Magazine's 16 Powerhouse Female Economists.

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. More »

Rachel M. Werner was interviewed by LDI about her new position as the First Female and First Physician-Economist Executive Director.

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

Angela Lee Duckworth was interviewed in a Forbes article and on the From the Dorm Room to the Board Room about her career journey.

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

PSC Associate Hanming Fang and his collaborators have created VoxChina.org, a space for discussing China’s economy in an Omnia article.

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. 

PARC associate Norma B. Coe's study on estimating dementia’s incremental costs to Medicare in the five years after diagnosis in older adults with and without dementia has been published in Penn LDI's Research Brief

On the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Science Friction” podcast, PSC associate Sarah Tishkoff discusses the limits of genetic-testing databases. More »

PSC & PARC Associate Mark V. Pauly was quoted on a Knowledge@Wharton podcast episode about allegations that generic drug makers conspired to fix prices.

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 & PARC Associate, Irma T. Elo has been awarded the 2019 Making a Difference in Diverse Communities Grant for her "Cognitive Decline with Aging in Diverse Chilean Communities and in Comparison with Mexico and the U.S" project with fellow PSC & PARC Associate Jere R. Behrman.

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. More »

University of Pennsylvania Provost Wendell Pritchett and Perelman School of Medicine Dean J. Larry Jameson are pleased to announce the appointment of PARC Associate, Rachel M. Werner as Executive Director of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI).

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.”

Linda H. Aiken, PSC Associate and professor of sociology, was awarded during the 2019 Lindback Awards for Distinguished Teaching the Provosts Award For Distinguished PhD Teaching and Mentoring.

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

With the President’s Engagement Prize, seniors José Maciel of Yakima, Washington, and Antonio Renteria of Laredo, Texas, mentored by PARC associate Adriana Perez, hope to bring information about subjects like nutrition and sleep to the mushroom farmworkers of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. The project reinforces preventive screenings already offered by a local clinic and primary care providers. More »

A new article in Nature mentions the need for racial and ethnic diversity in the groups of people studied in genomics research. More »

In a Penn Today article and on Knowledge@Wharton, Olivia S. Mitchell discusses the Treasury Department’s decision to allow private companies to pay retirees lump-sum pension payments. More »

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

Akudo Ejelonu was awarded the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center’s Russell Ackoff Doctoral Student Fellowship Award for 2019-2020 for her research on environmentally-induced migration and health outcome of climate migrants. She also got an honourable mention from the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship in March.

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. 

Linda H. Aiken, Jere R. Behrman, and Chilean colleagues on Chilean nursing evaluation project with Chilean Minister of Health after a briefing in Santiago, Chile.

“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. More »

On Knowledge@Wharton, Olivia S. Mitchell discusses an American Economic Association survey that reveals high levels of gender and racial bias in the field of economics. “It’s very depressing, actually,” says Mitchell. “I’ve been teaching for 40 years now, and, sure, 40 years ago there were very few women in the profession. You stood out. You were sometimes made to feel uncomfortable or awkward. More »

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. More »

New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Joung, Andrew, Benjamin Lockwood, and Alex Rees-Jones. 2018. "A Pilot Study of Uncertainty in Income Tax Forecasts." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2018-23. 

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.

New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Furstenberg, Frank 2019. "Family Change in Global Perspective: How and Why Family Systems Change." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2019-22.

In a commentary in the journal Cell and articles in PBS News Hour and More »