SUMR

Summer Undergraduate Mentored Research Program


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.

“SUMR changed my life by enabling me to understand health services, research and generalize a career path through it… The relationships I formed with SUMR mentors allowed me to understand the role of mentorship—some of those mentors remain in my life even all these years later.”

– Ahmed Whitt, PhD, MSW (2007 Cohort)

SUMR Scholars

Since 2000, more than 350 undergraduate students have participated in SUMR and 85% have gone on to have careers in health care.

Headshot of Veronica Cifuentes

Veronica Cifuentes

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Class of 2026
Headshot of DeJuan (DJ) Cintron

DeJuan (DJ) Cintron

Washington University in St. Louis, Class of 2027
Headshot of Lise Chelsea Mbakop

Lise Chelsea Mbakop

University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2026
Headshot of Liam Safran

Liam Safran

University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine, Class of 2027
Headshot of Lindsay Zhang

Lindsay Zhang

University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine, Class of 2027
Headshot of Ebunoluwa Akadiri

Ebunoluwa Akadiri

University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2025
Headshot of Justin Cayenne

Justin Cayenne

University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2025
Headshot of Josiah Drakes

Josiah Drakes

Xavier University, Class of 2025
Headshot of Arturo Bardales

Arturo Bardales

University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2024
Headshot of Meta Covington

Meta Covington

Brown University, Class of 2025
Headshot of Christine Duah

Christine Duah

University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2025
Headshot of Benicio Beatty

Benicio Beatty

Brown University, Class of 2025
Headshot of Anthony Montes de Oca

Anthony Montes de Oca

University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2025
Headshot of Gordon Elnager

Gordon Elnager

Pomona College, Class of 2024
Headshot of Aaliyah Campbell

Aaliyah Campbell

University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2026
Headshot of Fatih Dempsey

Fatih Dempsey

University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2026
Headshot of Sydney Grant

Sydney Grant

University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2024

Program Sponsors

The SUMR Program is supported by Penn LDI; Health Care Management Department of the Wharton School; Deputy Dean’s Office of the Wharton School; Perelman School of Medicine Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy; Office of Inclusion and Diversity; Eidos LGBTQ+ Health Initiative; the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology & Informatics; Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics (CCEB); Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care; Department of Radiology; Center of Health Economics of Treatment Interventions for Substance Use Disorder, HCV, and HIV (CHERISH); Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics (CHIBE); Palliative and Advanced Illness Research Center (PAIR); Penn Injury Science Center (PISC); Penn Dental; Eli Lilly and Company; PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; VA Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion (CHERP); and the faculty mentors’ research grants.