PHILADELPHIA – Mehret Mandefro, MD, MSc, has been appointed as a 2009-2010 White House Fellow. She is a Senior Fellow at Penn’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics and a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar. As a public health trained physician, her primary research interests are the connections between human rights and health, HIV prevention program development, and translation efforts targeting marginalized communities. Mandefro also works as an anthropologist who uses film as a medium of ethnography.
The prestigious White House Fellows program was created in 1964 by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Fifteen gifted and highly motivated men and women from diverse professions have been selected to work first hand at the highest levels of the federal government, while participating in an education program with private and public sector leaders. Fellows also travel to study U.S. policy in action both domestically and internationally.
Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System’s patient care facilities stretch from the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania to the New Jersey shore. These include the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chester County Hospital, Lancaster General Health, Penn Medicine Princeton Health, and Pennsylvania Hospital—the nation’s first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional facilities and enterprises include Good Shepherd Penn Partners, Penn Medicine at Home, Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital, and Princeton House Behavioral Health, among others.
Penn Medicine is an $11.1 billion enterprise powered by more than 49,000 talented faculty and staff.