Innovation Award: Penn Care Home and Hospice

Penn Nursing Professor Mary Naylor’s Transitional Care Model (TCM) was cited as the innovative competency that led to Penn Care Home and Hospice being awarded the 2014 Home Care LINK Spirit of Innovation Award. By initiating TCM, the home health agency has been able to establish a blueprint for quality in assessing high-risk patients and preventing future episodes of acute care.

TCM, designed by Dr. Naylor and a multidisciplinary team of Penn colleagues, has been clinically proven to reduce hospital re-admissions by up to 30 percent while producing substantial savings for hospitals and Medicare. The model assigns an advanced practice nurse to support patients and their families through critical transitions, such as hospital to home. An individual nurse can manage as many as 20 patients at a time over a 60-day period.

Dr. Naylor, is the Marian S. Ware Professor in Gerontology and director of the NewCourtland Center for Transitions and Health. She is also the National Program Director for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation program, Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative, aimed at generating, disseminating and translating research to understand how nurses contribute to quality patient care.

100 Most Inspiring: Dr. Paterson

Yvonne Paterson, associate dean for research and professor in the School of Nursing, has been named as one of the 100 most inspiring people in the life sciences industry by PharmaVOICE. She was recognized for her work in developing leading immunotherapies that target women’s cancer. Featured in the July/August 2014 issue of PharmaVOICE, Dr. Paterson was selected from a group of nominations submitted by industry peers.

Driven by her own diagnosis with breast cancer, Dr. Paterson was one of the early pioneers of tumor immunology through her groundbreaking work involving Listeria monocytogenes and CD8+ T-cells. That research has led to the development of cancer immunotherapy technology that targets established macroscopic tumors even in the face of profound immune tolerance to the tumor-associated antigen.

Taylor International Prize in Medicine: Drs. Lee and Trojanowski

Virginia M.-Y. Lee, and John Q. Trojanowski, co-directors of the Marian S. Ware Alzheimer Drug Discovery Program at the Perelman School of Medicine, are co-recipients of the 2014 J. Allyn Taylor International Prize in Medicine. They are being recognized for their “tireless work to find ways to understand and treat Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.” Drs. Lee and Trojanowski are also professors of pathology and laboratory medicine at Penn Medicine.

Western University’s Robarts Research Institute cites them as a collaborative team for the last two decades and among the 10 most cited neuroscientists in the world. The J. Allyn Taylor International Prize in Medicine is named after the founding chair of the Board at Robarts and includes a cash prize of $25,000 and a medal bearing the likeness of J. Allyn Taylor.

Board of Directors: Professor Shropshire

Kenneth L. Shropshire has been named an independent member of the Board of Directors of the Moelis & Company, a leading global independent investment bank. Professor Shropshire is the David W. Hauck Professor at the Wharton School, teaching legal and business aspects of sports; business law and ethics; negotiation and dispute resolution; and diversity and the law. He is the director and founder of the Wharton Sports Business Initiative.

UNESCO Literacy Prize: ILI

UNESCO awarded the International Literacy Institute (ILI), based at Penn’s Graduate School of Education, the Confucius International Literacy Prize for its technology-based program supporting literacy in South Africa.

ILI and the Molteno Institute for Language and Literacy, based in South Africa, partnered together for the Bridges to the Future Initiative. Working in three indigenous African languages and English, the initiative improves access to quality educational materials and also builds on languages that are highly motivating to historically disadvantaged populations in South Africa.

“The initiative provides a self-paced and multi-lingual learning environment with continuous remediation and support opportunities in an exciting and engaging format to learners,” said GSE Professor Dan Wagner, UNESCO chair, ILI director and co-founder and head of GSE’s International Educational Development Program.