Events
Hybrid: RCH B102AB, Richards Bldg., 3700 Hamilton Walk (and virtual via Zoom)
Hybrid-Research Ethics and Policy Series (REPS): Evolving Ethical Challenges in Decentralized Clinical Trials - Effy Vayena, PhD
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2025-10-07 12:00:00
2025-10-07 13:00:00
America/New_York
Hybrid-Research Ethics and Policy Series (REPS): Evolving Ethical Challenges in Decentralized Clinical Trials - Effy Vayena, PhD
Evolving Ethical Challenges in Decentralized Clinical Trials
Effy Vayena, PhD
Professor of Bioethics
Associate Vice President for Digital Transformation & Governance
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ)
Decentralized clinical trials (DCTs) have gained significant traction, especially following the COVID-19 pandemic. These trials rely on digital technologies and remote patient monitoring, promising to reach more diverse patient groups while reducing costs and accelerating research. Drawing on data from current DCTs, Dr. Vayena will present the evolution of the DTC landscape over the past few years. While highlighting the benefits of DCTs, the presentation will focus on the ethical challenges they raise as they are adopted across various fields of clinical research. Dr. Vayena will explore how these challenges have evolved over the past five years and propose directions for addressing them. By examining the intersection of ethics, clinical trials, and digital health technologies, Dr. Vayena aims to offer a better understanding of the complexities involved in conducting ethical decentralized clinical trials and guide future research practices.
Registration Required. Lunch provided.
Streaming available via Zoom.
Hybrid: RCH B102AB, Richards Bldg., 3700 Hamilton Walk (and virtual via Zoom)
Penn Medical Ethics
1104 Blockley Hall (Note: Virtual attendees can join by accessing this link: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/95353951407.)
Health Policy Research Seminar: Diane Alexander, PhD, Assistant Professor of Health Care Management, the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
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2025-10-08 12:00:00
2025-10-08 13:00:00
America/New_York
Health Policy Research Seminar: Diane Alexander, PhD, Assistant Professor of Health Care Management, the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Topic: "Selection into Mediicine."
Who chooses to become a physician, and how does this selection process shape health care delivery? This paper examines how selection into medicine in the United States influences physician practice styles, using macroeconomic conditions at the time of medical school application as an exogenous shock to the applicant pool. We find that labor market downturns in other prestigious fields increase medical school applications, particularly from students with non-pre-medical backgrounds. This shift in applicant composition leads to a cohort of physicians who are more likely to work in small group practices and bill Medicare more per beneficiary, even after accounting for experience, specialty choice, and patient risk scores. Our findings highlight selection into medicine as an often-overlooked channel that shapes physician practice styles and health care delivery.
Diane Alexander is an Assistant Professor of Health Care Management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research is predominantly in health care, studying the economics of the provision of health care services and the actions of health care providers. More broadly, she is also interested in the interactions between environmental policies and health, as well as between health care and education. Her work has been featured in media outlets including the Washington Post, Bloomberg, CityLab, Vox, and Scientific American, as well as podcasts such as Freakonomics radio and Vox’s The Weeds.
She has studied the roles played by new types of providers in health care delivery, focusing on retail and urgent care clinics; the role of nurse practitioners and physician assistants in access and health; and how payment incentives influence physician decision-making. In a strand of work focusing on the interaction of environment and place on health outcomes, she has studied the role of residential segregation in explaining persistent racial health disparities, and the effect of pollution on health, utilizing the excess diesel emissions from the Volkswagen emissions cheating scandal as a natural experiment.
Prior to joining Wharton, Alexander was an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. She received a B.A. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley and a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University.
1104 Blockley Hall (Note: Virtual attendees can join by accessing this link: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/95353951407.)
Penn Medical Ethics
Hybrid: 1402 Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Drive (and virtual via Zoom)
Hybrid-Penn Bioethics Seminar Series (PBS): "The Other Disabled President: JFK’s Chronic Back Pain and Cover Up"- Beth Linker, PhD
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2025-10-14 12:00:00
2025-10-14 13:00:00
America/New_York
Hybrid-Penn Bioethics Seminar Series (PBS): "The Other Disabled President: JFK’s Chronic Back Pain and Cover Up"- Beth Linker, PhD
The Other Disabled President: JFK’s Chronic Back Pain and Cover Up
Beth Linker, PhD
Department Chair, History and Sociology of Science
Samuel H. Preston Endowed Term Professor in the social sciences
University of Pennsylvania
Paralyzed in 1921 from the waist down from polio, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt kept his disability and his use of assistive mobility devices out of the public eye. All events were staged, requiring the coordination of the secret service, close confidants, and the press to orchestrate his image as nondisabled. Because of this, author Hugh Gallagher has characterized the FDR presidency as a “splendid deception” of significant proportions.
This paper argues that the same story can be told of John F. Kennedy. Kennedy struggled with back pain since his early adulthood. By the time of his presidential inauguration in January 1961, he had already undergone three back surgeries. During the campaign, one political advisor later confessed that JFK mostly used crutches in private, before and after public events. During his presidency, he took high doses of painkillers and relied on a near constant use of a back brace, all the while denouncing “soft Americans” and their presumed lives of leisure.
Using archival documents from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, this paper will explore JFK’s own splendid deception. In the end, I argue that contrary to the image of him advancing the cause of disability rights, JFK and his family fostered ableism, largely for their own political gains.
Registration Required; Lunch Provided
Streaming available via Zoom.
Hybrid: 1402 Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Drive (and virtual via Zoom)
Penn Medical Ethics
Hybrid: 1402 Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Drive (and virtual via Zoom)
Hybrid-Penn Bioethics Seminar Series (PBS): "Placebos in Psychiatry" - Kevin Kennedy, MD
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2025-10-28 12:00:00
2025-10-28 13:00:00
America/New_York
Hybrid-Penn Bioethics Seminar Series (PBS): "Placebos in Psychiatry" - Kevin Kennedy, MD
Placebos in Psychiatry
Kevin Kennedy, MD
Psychiatrist, Mental Health Clinic Chrome Team
Corporal Michael J. Crescenz VA Medical Center, Philadelphia
Kevin P. Kennedy, M.D. is interested in evaluating the quality of evidence supporting the pharmacological treatment of depression, with a particular interest in patients with medical and psychiatric comorbidities, the use of psychiatric polypharmacy, and augmentation strategies.
He is interested in identifying discrepancies between clinical trial evidence and real-world treatment in VA. At a conceptual level, he is interested in applying concepts of medical reversal and medical conservatism to psychiatry.
More detail to follow.
Registration required; Lunch provided.
Streaming available via Zoom.
Hybrid: 1402 Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Drive (and virtual via Zoom)
Penn Medical Ethics
Hybrid: RCH B102AB, Richards Bldg., 3700 Hamilton Walk (and virtual via Zoom)
Hybrid-Research Ethics and Policy Series (REPS): Neuroscience Research Ethics - Anna Wexler, PhD
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2025-11-11 12:00:00
2025-11-11 13:00:00
America/New_York
Hybrid-Research Ethics and Policy Series (REPS): Neuroscience Research Ethics - Anna Wexler, PhD
Neuroscience Research Ethics
Anna Wexler, PhD
Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy
University of Pennsylvania
Anna Wexler is the principal investigator of the Wexler Lab, where she studies the ethical, legal, and social issues surrounding emerging technology. She is particularly interested in do-it-yourself (DIY) medicine, citizen science, direct-to-consumer (DTC) health products, online patient communities, neuroscience technology, and alternative neurotherapies.
More detail to follow.
Registration Required. Lunch provided.
Streaming available via Zoom.
Hybrid: RCH B102AB, Richards Bldg., 3700 Hamilton Walk (and virtual via Zoom)
Penn Medical Ethics
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