Events
3600 Civic Center Blvd., 8-031 (hybrid)
Penn Bioethics Seminar (PBS): "Medicine and East German Dictatorship, 1949 - 1990" - Ulf Schmidt, PhD
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2026-09-29 12:00:00
2026-09-29 13:00:00
America/New_York
Penn Bioethics Seminar (PBS): "Medicine and East German Dictatorship, 1949 - 1990" - Ulf Schmidt, PhD
Medicine and East German Dictatorship, 1949-1990
Ulf Schmidt, PhD
Nucleus Professor of Modern History
University of Hamburg
Dictatorship under state socialism as it evolved was experienced differently by different people and sections of society. Taking an integrated history approach, Ulf Schmidt, author of Justice at Nuremberg, asks how the East German variant of a modern dictatorship worked in practice in the field of medicine and science. Were medical professionals aware that they were living in a dictatorship, and if so how did this influence their thinking and learned behaviour? How much agency did they believe they had? Did they know that their daily choices were not only contributing but defining factors in transforming the regime into what scholars have called a participatory dictatorship?
Drawing on newly-discovered correspondence and State Security files, this talk explores the relationships and underlying tensions between this dictatorial system and medical professionals who were managing, supporting, and resisting it in multiple, often highly informal ways. It explores how doctors and medical experts internalised and cultivated knowledge which helped to navigate, contribute to, and stabilise the regime through explicit and subtle forms of action and inaction. It critically examines those elusive bonds which linked people in myriad ways to the machinery of power and mass surveillance.
Ulf Schmidt is senior Professor of Modern History, Director of the Centre for the Study of Health, Ethics, and Society, and Fellow of the UK Royal Historical Society. His books include Justice at Nuremberg (2004), Karl Brandt: The Nazi Doctor (2007) and Secret Science (2015). His latest book on Rethinking Cooperation in Cold War Europe will be published by Bloomsbury in 2026.
Registration required; Streaming available via Zoom.
3600 Civic Center Blvd., 8-031 (hybrid)
Penn Medical Ethics
Hybrid
MEHP Joint Lecture - Prof. Amitabh Chandra
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2026-10-01 12:00:00
2026-10-01 13:00:00
America/New_York
MEHP Joint Lecture - Prof. Amitabh Chandra
We invite you to attend the third annual MEHP Joint Lecture featuring Amitabh Chandra, PhD from the Harvard Business School on Thursday, October 1 at 12 pm.
Talk Title: “The Health Costs of Cost-Sharing: Copayments, Deductibles and the Shoppers who Didn’t Show Up”
Location: 3600 CCB, 8-031 (large classroom); lunch will be provided
The talk is hybrid and will not be recorded.
Registration is required..
Professor Chandra is the Henry and Allison McCance Family Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School where he is the Faculty Chair of the joint MS/MBA program in the life-sciences, the Faculty Chair of the executive education program in the life-sciences, chairs the Pagliuca Harvard Life Lab committee, and serves on the selection committee of the Blavatnik Fellows. Professor Chandra is the Ethel Zimmerman Wiener Professor of Public Policy and Director of Health Policy Research at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is an economist whose research examines how economic forces shape health care, with particular attention to innovation and pricing in the biopharmaceutical industry, value in health care, medical malpractice, racial disparities in healthcare, and discovering new methods for treating Alzheimer's. His research has been published in leading journals including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, and Science. Prof. Chandra is a member of the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel of Health Advisors. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has received numerous honors for his contributions to health economics and medical research. His full biography can be found here.
Hybrid
Penn Medical Ethics
3600 Civic Center Blvd, 11-102AB (Hybrid)
Bronstein/Research Ethics & Policy Series (REPS): "Open Science and Race Science: Values in Conflict" - Eric Turkheimer, PhD
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2026-10-06 12:00:00
2026-10-06 13:00:00
America/New_York
Bronstein/Research Ethics & Policy Series (REPS): "Open Science and Race Science: Values in Conflict" - Eric Turkheimer, PhD
Eric Turkheimer, PhD
Hugh Scott Hamilton Professor of Psychology
University of Virginia
Dating at least from Darwin and his half-cousin Francis Galton, one of the first impulses at the dawn of evolutionary and genetic discoveries has been to apply them in the service of racism. The history of attempts to justify racism with scientific biology now stretches over a century and a half. In the modern era, racially motivated science presents difficult problems for the responsible scientific community. Neither of the more extreme responses-- striving to forbid it or pretending it is simply normal science-- is satisfactory. Moreover, contemporary changes to the landscape of scientific publication have made it increasingly difficult to find a line between unregulated internet discussion and peer-reviewed reporting in sanctioned journals. Dr. Turkheimer will review the broad history of these problems, trace them through his own career, and provide some suggestions moving forward.
Registration required; Lunch provided
Streaming available via Zoom.
3600 Civic Center Blvd, 11-102AB (Hybrid)
Penn Medical Ethics
CCB 08-031, 8th Floor, 3600 Civic Center Blvd. (Note: Virtual attendees can join by accessing this link: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/95740259034.)
Health Policy Research Seminar: Caitlin Caspi, SCD
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2026-10-08 10:00:00
2026-10-08 17:30:00
America/New_York
Health Policy Research Seminar: Caitlin Caspi, SCD
Topic: "Wages, SNAP, and the Safety Net: Findings from a 5-year Study of Nutrition-Related Outcomes Among Low-Wage Workers."
About the Talk: This presentation integrates findings from an NIH-funded natural experiment examining the nutrition-related effects of a phased minimum wage increase in an intervention and comparison city. The study followed low-wage workers over five years (2018–2022), combining difference-in-difference analysis with nested qualitative interviews. Wages increased similarly in both cities, providing no evidence of a differential wage effect attributable to the minimum wage policy. Consistent with this, there were no policy-specific effects on body mass index, food spending, or most nutrition-related and health outcomes. At the same time, food insecurity declined substantially while SNAP participation and benefit amounts increased, particularly during the COVID-19 period. Qualitative findings contextualize these trends, showing how participants experienced changes to SNAP and the broader safety net during the study period. These supports provided meaningful, but temporary, economic relief. The presentation will integrate quantitative and qualitative findings to examine the challenges of evaluating a single economic policy within a dynamic policy environment and consider how wages, nutrition assistance, housing, and other safety-net policies interact to shape economic stability and health.
About the Speaker: Caitlin Caspi, ScD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Allied Health Sciences and serves as the Director of Food Security Initiatives at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Heath. Dr. Caspi is a social epidemiologist focusing on evaluating policies and interventions related to food insecurity, diet quality, and weight outcomes. Dr. Caspi uses a social-ecological lens and a community-engaged approach in her work. Her research incorporates food policies and other social determinants of health to address inequities related to nutrition. Her food insecurity research is largely focused on U.S. food assistance programs and the charitable food system. She has also led several qualitative and quantitative studies aimed at understanding how non-food policies, such as minimum wage and COVID-19 economic relief measures, affect food insecurity and other health outcomes among households with lower incomes. Her work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Healthy Eating Research program, and HHS Administration for Community Living, among other funders. She completed her graduate work at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. She joined the Department of Allied Health Sciences as Associate Professor in 2020, coming from the University of Minnesota’s Department of Family Medicine and Community Health.
CCB 08-031, 8th Floor, 3600 Civic Center Blvd. (Note: Virtual attendees can join by accessing this link: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/95740259034.)
Penn Medical Ethics
Steinberg-Dietrich Hall, Room 1201, 3620 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA
HP X LDI Research Seminar: John Cawley, PhD
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2026-10-13 12:00:00
2026-10-13 13:00:00
America/New_York
HP X LDI Research Seminar: John Cawley, PhD
Please note: Registration is required. In-person attendance is strongly encouraged, although virtual access will be provided for all registrants.
Co-sponsored with the Leanord Davis Institute of Health Economics.
John Cawley, PhD, is the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Chair in Public Policy and Professor of Economics and Public Administration and International Affairs at Syracuse University. He also serves as Senior Research Associate in the Maxwell-based Center for Policy Research and as a research affiliate in the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health. His research focuses on the economics of risky health behaviors; in particular, those that relate to obesity. He also serves as an Honorary Professor of Economics at the J.E. Cairnes School of Business and Economics at the University of Galway in Ireland. In 2016, he was named a Fulbright Specialist in Economics to Ireland through the Fulbright Scholar Program. Cawley is President-elect of the American Society of Health Economists and will serve as President from 2026-27. Since 2022 he has served on the board of directors of the International Health Economics Association. Cawley received a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago.
Steinberg-Dietrich Hall, Room 1201, 3620 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA
Penn Medical Ethics
To be added to MEHP's events listserv, please contact lisa.bailey@pennmedicine.upenn.edu.