PHILADELPHIA — Penn Medicine was recognized with two Gold Excellence awards by the International Economic Development Council (IEDC) for its efforts to create positive change in the community. Penn Medicine was honored for its work redeveloping Philadelphia’s former Civic Center into a matrix of world-class medical research and treatment centers. The award included the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC), who owned the land, as well as the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), which has also built in the area.
The two honors, in the categories of Public Private Partnerships for communities with populations greater than 500,000, and Partnerships with Educational Institutions for communities with populations greater than 500,000, were presented at an awards ceremony earlier this month at the IEDC Annual Conference in Philadelphia. The non-profit IEDC is a membership organization serving economic developers. Its Excellence in Economic Development Awards recognize the world’s best economic development programs and partnerships, marketing materials, and the year’s most influential leaders.
The former Civic Center site now houses Penn Medicine’s Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine, the Smilow Center for Translational Research, and the Roberts Proton Therapy Center, all of which have taken shape since 2005. The area is also the site of the Colket Translational Research Building and the Buerger Center for Advanced Pediatric Care, slated to open in 2015.
Together, Penn Medicine and CHOP invested more than $2 billion in its facilities on the site, and construction on another one million square feet of space is expected to finish by 2015.
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.