Our initiatives are focused on clinical transformation, payment models and affordability, and incentives to change behaviors, harnessing the insights of Penn’s renowned medical researchers, data scientists, healthcare and behavioral economists, and innovators.
Our Initiatives
We employ a health equity lens across our work, examining and addressing socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic disparities and other systemic barriers to accessing high quality, patient-centered healthcare.
Based on an identified critical need to increase the frequency and improve the timeliness of serious illness conversations (SICs), we are testing behavioral economics-informed multilevel implementation strategies for early SICs, with health equity as a driving force.
This project will evaluate both the impact of state Medicaid mandates for coverage of routine clinical-trial related costs and the impact of the ACA’s Medicaid expansion on racial and ethnic disparities in clinical trial enrollment. This research will allow for a deeper understanding of inequities in clinical trial participation as well as the impact of state and federal policies on enrollment patterns.
Resource allocation in the VA is guided by tools such as the VA CAN score, but studies have shown that these tools may result in under-representation of those most at risk. This project examines inequity resulting from such algorithms and examines the impact of factoring in metrics such as race and social determinants of health.
This study examined whether sending take-at-home FIT kits directly to patients’ homes would increase colorectal cancer screening rates among those for whom rates tend to be lower: people who are uninsured, low income, and/or members of racial and ethnic minority groups.
This study, under the Lazarex Foundation IMPACT program, looks at the effect of financial reimbursement on patient enrollment and retention, as well as ethnic/racial diversity, in clinical cancer trials at Abramson Cancer Center.