Speaker

David A. Asch, MD, MBA is the Sr Vice Dean for Strategic Initiatives at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania and the John Morgan Professor at the Perelman School and the Wharton School. He created and from 2001 to 2012 directed the Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion -- the Department of Veterans Affairs national center to examine and eliminate racial disparities in health and health care.  From 1998 to 2012 he was Executive Director of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. From 2012 to 2022 he was Executive Director of the Penn Medicine Center for Health Care Innovation. His research is in the area of behavioral economics and aims to improve how physicians and patients make medical choices. 

He has been recognized for contributions to teaching and research, including the VA Under Secretary’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Health Services Research (2008), the Robert J. Glaser Distinguished Teacher Award from the Association of American Medical Colleges (2009), the John M. Eisenberg Award for Career Achievement in Research from the Society of General Internal Medicine (2010), the David E. Rogers Award from the Association of American Medical Colleges for “major contributions to improving the health and health care of the American people” (2018), the Distinguished Investigator Award (2019) and Distinguished Educator Award (2022) from the Association for Clinical and Translational Science, and the Distinguished Career Award from AcademyHealth (2020). He is an elected member of the Association of American Physicians and the National Academy of Medicine.