PHILADELPHIA — Steven Joffe, MD, MPH, and Kevin Volpp, MD, PhD, have been named Vice Chair of Medical Ethics and Vice Chair of Health Policy, respectively, in the Department of Medical Ethics & Health Policy at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
“I am delighted to announce these newly created roles for Dr. Volpp and Dr. Joffe, who will together help cement our department's national leadership in the areas of both health policy and medical ethics,” said Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MSC, MD, PhD, Vice Provost for Global Initiatives and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy. “They will undoubtedly enable Penn to build on its role as a key contributor to important national discussions in both these disciplines, which reach across all areas of health care delivery in the 21st century."
Dr. Steve Joffe, a pediatric oncologist and bioethicist, is currently the Emanuel and Robert Hart Associate Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy. He is also the Director of the Penn Fellowship in Advanced Biomedical Ethics, chairs the Children’s Oncology Group Bioethics Committee, and serves as a member of the FDA’s Pediatrics Ethics Subcommittee.
His research addresses the many ethical challenges that arise in the conduct of clinical and translational investigation. He has led NIH and foundation grants to study the roles and responsibilities of principal investigators in multicenter randomized trials, accountability in the clinical research enterprise, and children’s capacity to engage in research decisions. He has coauthored over 75 articles addressing these topics. He is also an elected member of the American Pediatric Society and a Fellow of The Hastings Center.
Dr. Joffe attended Harvard College, received his medical degree from the University of California at San Francisco, and received his public health degree from UC Berkeley. He trained in pediatrics at UCSF and undertook fellowship training in pediatric hematology/oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children’s Hospital. He is an attending physician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Dr. Kevin Volpp is the founding Director of the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics at the Leonard Davis Institute (LDI CHIBE), one of two NIH- funded Centers on Behavioral Economics and Health in the United States. He also serves as co-director of the Penn Medicine Center for Innovation, and is a professor of Health Care Management at the Wharton School.
Dr. Volpp’s research on the impact of financial and organizational incentives on health behavior and health outcomes work has been recognized by numerous awards including the Alice S. Hersh Award from AcademyHealth, the British Medical Journal Group Award for translating Research into Practice, and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), an award presented at the White House as the highest honor given by the US government to early career scientists.
He has successfully competed for more than $50 million in grant funding in the 13 years he has been a faculty member at Penn. After serving as a member of the editorial board of the Annals of Internal Medicine for three years, Dr. Volpp is now a Contributing Writer to JAMA. He is also an elected member of several honorary societies including the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI), and the Association of American Physicians (AAP).
Dr. Volpp completed his medical training at the University of Pennsylvania and Brigham and Women’s hospital and has a PhD in Applied Economics and Managerial Science from the Wharton School. He is a board-certified general internist, core faculty member of the Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion (CHERP), and practicing physician at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center.
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.