The Pandemic Year How COVID Could Change Medicine for Good the Future Battle on the Immune Front
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FALL 2020 The Pandemic Year How COVID Could Change Medicine for Good The Future Battle on the Immune Front Also: A Century of Women in Medicine at Penn THE PREP DEPARTMENTS Left THE PREP Kneeling in Remembrance and Rising to the Challenge 2 EDITOR’S NOTE The Pandemic Year—and How We’re Getting Through It 3 VITAL SIGNS Responses to COVID-19 and Beyond 14 MEDICINE PLUS From Preserving Mummies KNEELING IN REMEMBRANCE to Practicing Medicine 44 DEVELOPMENT MATTERS Remembering Madlyn Abramson; AND RISING TO THE CHALLENGE Superheroes of 2020 By MaryKate Wust 50 AWARDS & ALUMNI NEWS 16 Faculty Honors, Alumni Progress Notes and Obituaries In early June, faculty and staff came together at Penn To meet this moment with the urgency it demands, the 56 FUTURE PROGNOSIS The Immune Front Medicine sites across the region to join silent demonstrations Office of Inclusion and Diversity partnered with Penn 24 organized with #WhiteCoatsForBlackLives, which aims to Medicine Academy to develop the Action for Cultural eliminate racism from medicine and promote the health Transformation (ACT) plan—a framework that champions and wellness of Black and minority communities. At Penn diversity, inclusion, and equality. ACT seeks to drive both Presbyterian Medical Center, staff spilled out of the concourse long- and short-term goals that will make Penn a better STAFF and into the street, while at Penn Medicine Lancaster General place to work, learn, and receive care. The ACT agenda in- Rachel Ewing FALL 2020 / VOLUME XXXII NUMBER 2 Health, employees were met with honks and cheers as they cludes cultural shifts like widening opportunities for research Editor lined the sidewalk. At the main event at Franklin Field on Penn’s and advancement for underrepresented minorities, addressing campus, hundreds of members of the Penn and Children’s the social determinants of health that affect patients’ lives, MaryKate Wust Assistant Editor By Steve Graff Hospital of Philadelphia communities filled the turf and and setting the next generation of physicians up for success 16 Facing the Pandemic COVID-19 is changing medicine in real time—and likely for good. spread into the bleachers. by ensuring culturally competent care is at the center of Graham P. Perry/NCS Studios For eight minutes and 46 seconds—the amount of time a their education. Design / Art Direction Minneapolis police officer fatally kneeled on George Floyd’s In an open letter titled, “My Heart is Broken, But I Am 24 Profiles of Women in Medicine, 1920-2020 neck—participants took a knee in remembrance of his life Sustained by Hope,” Vice Dean for Inclusion and Diversity Eve Peggy Peterson By Carol Benenson Perloff Contributing Photographer and the lives of all victims of police brutality, in defiance of Higginbotham SM, MD, ML, wrote, “I am reminded during One century, bracketed by two global pandemics. Between 1920 and 2020, women rose from second-class citizenship to take the reins as pioneering the racist systems that allow oppression to flourish, and in this difficult time of the phrase, ‘to whom much is given, ADMINISTRATION leaders in medicine, among all other areas of public life. support of the protests sparked across the nation. much is required.’ As professionals, we have had opportunities Patrick Norton “We kneel in the hope that we don’t have another hashtag that few others will ever realize. … Thus, using our gifts, our Vice President for Public Affairs next week or next month. We kneel so that moments like opportunities, our blessings, what can we do to help craft Holly Auer, MBE this turn into movements,” said Florencia Greer Polite, MD, the alternative path … and emerge as a better society?” Associate Vice President, chief of General Obstetrics and Gynecology, whose powerful The Penn Medicine community has already taken several Communications words soared across Franklin Field. But kneeling, she cau- key steps on the path to an antiracist health system, including tioned, is not enough. “Breaking down systemic racism is initiating authentic conversations and requiring that each going to take real work. The question is: Are we willing to do member of the workforce complete unconscious bias training PENN MEDICINE IS AVAILABLE ONLINE AND VIA EMAIL! Penn Medicine is published for the alumni and the hard work of confronting implicit bias and recognizing by year’s end. As Higginbotham noted in an interview for friends of Penn Medicine by the Office of Public You can read and share the stories from this issue and recent past issues of Penn Medicine, Affairs. © 2020 by the Trustees of the University our role in the current system?” the Penn Medicine News Blog, sustainable, transformational browse related links, and enjoy extra photos online. Visit: PennMedicine.org/magazine of Pennsylvania. All rights reserved. For alumni To that question, Penn Medicine has responded with a change requires widespread support from faculty, staff, and address updates, visit quakernet.alumni.upenn.edu Subscribe to the magazine’s email edition: PennMedicine.org/news/subscribe or contact [email protected]. Address all resounding “yes.” students alike: “There’s nothing more powerful than a other correspondence to Penn Medicine Magazine, Follow on Twitter: @PennMedMag community being galvanized and pushing to become the Department of Communications, 3600 Civic Center Boulevard, 5th Floor Suite 500, Philadelphia, PA best it can be.” 19104-4310, or call 215-662-2560, or email [email protected]. EDITOR’S NOTE VITAL SIGNS The Pandemic Year— CARE IN THE and How We’re COMMUNITY Getting Through It The COVID-19 pandemic has dispropor- tionately impacted communities of color, and particularly Black and Hispanic individuals. Combined with a summer of civil unrest We called it “Flu Forward.” Two years ago in the pages sparked by police brutality, the pandemic has of this magazine, we looked back 100 years to the 1918 flu highlighted longstanding systemic inequities pandemic and speculated on whether such a disease could that have put the health of racial and ethnic strike again. Our experts’ chorus: It wasn’t a question of if Marc Goldfarb, RN, BSN, CNOR, was inspired to take portraits of his minority groups at risk. humanity would face another great global pandemic, but when. masked and shielded colleagues in the spring. “As nurses were To break down barriers preventing under- The answer to that question came sooner than many of asked to remain flexible and provide care in different settings, we served community members from accessing began to lean on each other for support,” Goldfarb said. “I found us would have expected with COVID-19. And this issue myself working alongside a lot of familiar faces, only the expressions COVID-19 care, Penn Medicine leveraged its serves, in a few ways, as an elaboration of that answer. had changed. I didn’t see fear. I saw concern. I didn’t see hope- 16-year partnership with the Dr. Bernett L. We have also broadened our scope as we grapple with lessness, I saw bravery. I never saw weakness, I saw strength. And Johnson Jr. Sayre Health Center. Adding to more than anything else, I noticed camaraderie.” what a contemporary pandemic means in our lives and work their list of collaborative clinical, research, in academic medicine. Our story about the 1918 flu implicitly educational, and advocacy initiatives, Penn posed a third question after “if” and “when” the next global our loved ones, and for ourselves. It includes being there to and Sayre created a drive- and walk-through pandemic would strike: How would we deal with it? The an- extend a helping hand—even if virtually, from a physical testing site in Cobbs Creek, a predominantly swers we delved into two years ago proved prescient to the distance—as we all strive to get through this. Black neighborhood in West Philadelphia. The approaches now undertaken here and around the world— And sometimes the answer to “how” is evident even with- site is one of nearly a dozen Penn Medicine public health surveillance, novel treatment strategies, and out words, but with a feeling of compassion, support and COVID-19 testing sites serving communities rapidly deployed, fresh approaches to vaccines including camaraderie as we’ve supported one another in different throughout the region, including several testing RNA-based and DNA-based vaccines pioneered at Penn ways than before. It was 5:30 on a chilly morning in April sites that were stood up rapidly and efficiently Medicine. Our cover story in this issue offers glimpses of when Colleen Kelly, RN, BSN, CNOR, paused before starting in the earliest days of the pandemic. this full-force effort underway at our institution since the her shift outside the entrance of the Hospital of the University In the first week alone, Sayre staff performed spring, including the immediate clinical response, support of Pennsylvania to allow a colleague to take her photo—the 906 tests. Since May, more than 15,800 Phila- for the workforce, and planning for a changed future. photo now on this issue’s cover. Moments later, patients saw delphians have been tested there, and the site Before COVID struck, we had already embarked on an- the warmth of Kelly’s kind eyes to calm their fears as they continues to run like a well-oiled machine, other 100-year look back for this issue, timed to the centen- arrived for surgeries that couldn’t be delayed, even in the offering COVID-19 tests, behavioral health nial of women’s suffrage in the United States, with profiles earliest peak of the pandemic when many non-emergency screenings, and flu vaccinations. The combina- of Penn medical alumnae from each decade from 1920 to procedures were put on hold. At the time, visitation restrictions tion of barrier-free medical and behavioral the present.