Celebrating 25 years of inspiring the next generation of health services researchers.
About
The Summer Undergraduate Mentored Research Program (SUMR) is an internship that introduces talented undergraduate students, with a demonstrated commitment in advancing the needs of underrepresented groups in health services, population health, and clinical epidemiology, to research in this field.
Despite tremendous advances in health care, minorities have higher rates of heart disease, many cancers, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS than white populations. It’s going to take more than medicine to change this fact. It will take health services researchers who understand the political, social, economic, and environmental realities that have created such deep disparities and inequities in health and health care. Different life experiences and perspectives result in richer ideas and findings more relevant to the country’s highly diverse population of patients.
Founded in 2000 by Penn LDI and the Wharton School’s Health Care Management Department, the program helps advance equity in the health care professions. Participating scholars work with Penn faculty on mentored research projects, attend the Academy Health Annual Research Meeting, and present on their projects at the End of SUMR Research Symposium.
Black women are 3x more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women.
CDC
32% of all healthcare practitioners are Black, Asian, or Hispanic/Latinx, despite making up 39% of the U.S. population.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
People of color are more likely to report unmet needs for cancer care, including supportive care.
Factors Associated With Unmet Supportive Care Needs and Emergency Department Visits and Hospitalizations in Ambulatory Oncology. JAMA Netw Open. 2023.
Women are underrepresented in leadership roles in academic medicine, especially at the highest levels.
Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)
Leadership
JOANNE LEVY
Founding Director, SUMR
Bio
Joanne Levy is Director of Student Initiatives and Founding Director of the Summer Undergraduate Minority Research (SUMR) program at Penn LDI. She also administers LDI’s Post-Doc Program, and the Wharton PhD Program in Health Economics, where she is responsible for student recruitment, advising, counseling, and placement. She is a graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook with High Honors and holds an MBA from the Wharton School and a Master’s in city planning with outstanding academic achievement from Penn.
CLAUDIO LUCARELLI
Associate Professor, The Wharton School and Faculty Director, SUMR
Bio
Claudio Lucarelli, PhD is an Associate Professor of Healthcare Management at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the industrial organization of health care markets, with a focus on the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. He has been recognized for his work on Medicare Part D, a federal program delivered through the private sector, showing in a series of papers that Medicare beneficiaries are able to navigate a complex array of choices and to learn over time. He is the recipient of the 19th National Institute for Health Care Management Research Award and Honorable Mention in its 22nd version.
He is currently studying the impact of insurance design on the adoption of new technology and the growth rate of health care spending. His work on the pharmaceutical industry has provided interesting insights on the pricing of cancer drugs, and he is currently working on building price indices that are able to include patient heterogeneity and adjust for quality. Through his studies of the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries, he has developed expertise on the health care systems of several countries. His research has been published in leading economics journals such as the American Economic Review, International Economic Review, and the RAND Journal of Economics. Professor Lucarelli has advised antitrust authorities and government institutions in several countries.
Prior to joining Wharton, Professor Lucarelli served as Dean of the School of Business and Economics at Universidad de los Andes in Chile, and was an Assistant Professor of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University. He received his PhD in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
MARK PAULY
Bendheim Professor, The Wharton School and Founding Principal Investigator, SUMR
Bio
Claudio Lucarelli, PhD is an Associate Professor of Healthcare Management at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the industrial organization of health care markets, with a focus on the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. He has been recognized for his work on Medicare Part D, a federal program delivered through the private sector, showing in a series of papers that Medicare beneficiaries are able to navigate a complex array of choices and to learn over time. He is the recipient of the 19th National Institute for Health Care Management Research Award and Honorable Mention in its 22nd version.
He is currently studying the impact of insurance design on the adoption of new technology and the growth rate of health care spending. His work on the pharmaceutical industry has provided interesting insights on the pricing of cancer drugs, and he is currently working on building price indices that are able to include patient heterogeneity and adjust for quality. Through his studies of the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries, he has developed expertise on the health care systems of several countries. His research has been published in leading economics journals such as the American Economic Review, International Economic Review, and the RAND Journal of Economics. Professor Lucarelli has advised antitrust authorities and government institutions in several countries.
Prior to joining Wharton, Professor Lucarelli served as Dean of the School of Business and Economics at Universidad de los Andes in Chile, and was an Assistant Professor of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University. He received his PhD in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.