Penn Bioethics Seminar Series: Genevieve Kanter, PhD

The Revolving Door in the Regulation of US Health Care

Genevieve Kanter, PhD
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Medical Ethics, and Health Policy; Director of Wharton Public Policy Certificate Program, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania

In-person! Livestreaming also available.
Boxed lunches will be provided for in-person attendees.

Abstract: An important ethical issue in health care regulation is the "revolving door." Defined in this context as the movement of employees between regulatory agencies and the industries they regulate, the revolving door raises concerns because these employee flows are thought to render regulatory decisions more vulnerable to industry interests. I present research on the scale and features of the revolving door at the US Department of Health and Human Services, a federal department that oversees US health care policy and includes critical health agencies such as FDA, CMS, and CDC.

Professor Genevieve Kanter's research focuses on the FDA and regulation of biomedical technologies; conflicts of interest; and hospital and physician payment models. She earned a PhD in Economics and in Sociology from the University of Chicago, and completed an NIH postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University and research fellowships in ethics and health policy at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital. At the University of Pennsylvania, she holds a primary faculty appointment in the Division of General Internal Medicine and a secondary faculty appointment in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy in the Perelman School of Medicine.

She is also Director of the Wharton Public Policy Certificate Program at the Wharton School. Other affiliations include the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (Penn LDI), where she is Senior Fellow; the Penn Center for Precision Medicine (PCPM); Penn's Cardiovascular Outcomes, Quality, and Evaluative Research (CAVOQER) Center; the Penn Center for Cancer Care Innovation (PC3I); and the Penn Center for Pharmacoepidemiology Research and Training (CPeRT). She is also a Nonresident Fellow of the Leonard D Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics at the University of Southern California.

In addition to her institutional appointments, Professor Kanter serves on the Medicare Evidence Development & Coverage Advisory Committee (MEDCAC) and is Vice Chair of the Advisory Committee for the AcademyHealth Health Economics Interest Group. Her empirical work and essays have been published in leading medical and health policy journals, including JAMA, the New England Journal of Medicine, Health Affairs, Milbank Quarterly, and the American Journal of Public Health.

For more information, contact Mary Pham, Mary.Pham@pennmedicine.upenn.edu.