Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program

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Current Scholar Spotlight

Shreya Kangovi, MD (Internal Medicine/Pediatrics) is a 2^nd-Year UPenn Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar who is pursuing community-based research that will lay the groundwork for establishing an infrastructure of community health workers (CHW) who can improve health outcomes for socioeconomically vulnerable patients. During her time on the program, Shreya has designed and implemented a randomized-controlled trial of The Patient-Centered Transition (PaCT) Project. PaCT is a novel intervention which utilizes community health workers (CHWs) to provide socioeconomically vulnerable patients with advocacy, social support and navigation through the transition from hospital to primary care. PaCT is supported by grants from the Bach Fund, the Clinical and Translational Sciences Award for Community-Based Research Small Grants Program, the Eisenberg Award, the Penn Medicine Department of Internal Medicine and the Presbyterian Medical Center Department of Medicine Fund. More information about the PaCT program can be found here.

Dr. Kangovi is also the principal investigator on a qualitative study, 'Patient Perceptions of Transition'. This study explores the perceptions that underinsured patients have of their post-hospital transition to primary care. This study is supported by a grant from the Leonard Davis Institute. In addition, Dr. Kangovi has created a survey instrument focused on the challenges patients face after being discharged from the hospital. This survey is currently being administered by nurses, social workers and clinical resources managers to all patients readmitted to any Penn Medicine hospital. Read more about Shreya’s work in the Philadelphia Inquirer and NPR’s Marketplace.

Research Spotlight

Working in partnership with Bartram High School and Tilden Middle School this past summer, the 2011-2013 Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars at University of Pennsylvania set out to develop a comprehensive understanding of bullying in selected schools in Southwest Philadelphia and to identify strategies and best practices for bullying prevention and remediation. To achieve this, they conducted stakeholder interviews of teachers, administrators, parents, local community organizations, government and national bullying experts, as well as focus groups of local middle and high school students. They supplemented these perspectives with a review of the relevant biomedical and social science literature. From these sources, they identified a number of common themes, potential leverage points for intervention and resources that could support implementation of anti-bullying best practices and program development at Bartram and Tilden.

The themes from stakeholders generated five specific target areas on which the Scholars’ recommendations focus: measurement and reporting, prevention, remediation, awareness, and cyber-bullying. In their full report, the Scholars provided background from content experts and recent literature on each theme followed by recommendations specific to Bartram and Tilden. Each theme and its corresponding recommendation are summarized below:

 

 

• Measurement and Reporting. Without knowledge of the complexity and severity of schooling bullying, one cannot target efforts at the root cause of the problem. School stakeholders must first determine the size and scope of the bullying problem within the school, utilizing innovative strategies to encourage reporting and creating tools to continually monitor the problem. Recommendations included establishing a web portal, “Text-A-Teacher”, to report bullying incidents and behavior and establishing a web-based survey to assess current bullying rates at each school.
• Prevention. The complex nature and diverse factors that lead to school bullying make designing effective prevention programs extremely challenging. Even the most effective whole-school based approach to-date, the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP), demonstrates varying degrees of efficacy when administrators attempt to adapt it to their schools. Given this, the Scholars recommended that Bartram develop an anti-bullying task force to lead adoption of proven community, school, classroom, and individual-based prevention strategies, tailored to their specific needs.
• Remediation. The success of anti-bullying programs depends on establishing effective prevention strategies, but school administrators will inevitably continue to manage active bullying behavior while addressing the needs of the bullied. Bartram has a strong foundation in this realm. The school has established and consistently enforced consequences for bullying behavior and has developed working relationships with health care organizations in Southwest Philadelphia. The Scholars recommended building upon this system of discipline and remediation for bullies and victims of bullying and bolstering behavioral health supports for each group. Screening for behavioral health needs and social crises of persistent bullies and victims should be performed early and targeted services using a multidisciplinary approach should be provided when indicated. For the victims of bullying, they also recommended establishing skills-based programs aimed at improving the social skills of at risk children.
• Awareness. Any anti-bullying initiative will be aided by increasing awareness of students, staff, and community about bullying and its negative effects. The Scholars recommended initiating an awareness program targeted at students, staff, and the Southwest Philadelphia community. This awareness program would ideally be incorporated into the school curriculum starting with a kickoff event, incorporate the resources and support of the community and parents using social media and internet and elicit concerns and suggestions of teachers and staff, while providing in-services for continuing education on anti-bullying efforts.
• Cyber-bullying. Cyber-bullying has become an issue of particular concern for schools. The Scholars’ recommendations focused on increasing the capacity of schools and parents to track online activity through training sessions, such as a “Facebook Education Night” and encouraging online communication of key stakeholders by creating a school Facebook page to publicize school policies, programs and new initiatives to students, staff, parents and community leaders.

A copy of the full report can be found here.

Alumni Spotlight

Raina Merchant, MD (Emergency Medicine) is an alumna of the UPenn Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar program (2007-2010) and is now a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania and a Penn RWJ CSP Associate Director. Dr. Merchant’s research is focused on improving survival from cardiac arrest. She is specifically interested in implementation of existing resuscitation therapies and tracking the diffusion of cardiac arrest interventions. In the in-patient setting, she is interested in using administrative data sets to identify disparities in post-resuscitation care.

On January 31, 2012, Dr. Merchant kicked off National Heart Month by launching the MyHeartMap Challenge (MHMC). The MyHeartMap Challenge was a social media, mobile media, crowdsourcing contest to find automated external defibrillators (AEDs) in Philadelphia. Through this initiative, Dr. Merchant hopes to create a map and database that can be used to help victims of cardiac arrest, improve access to emergency care, and hopefully save lives. Contestants won by submitting the most AEDs ($10,000) or select special unmarked "Golden" AEDs ($50 per AED). More information about the contest can be found at myheartmap.org.

Follow the MyHeartMap Challenge on Twitter (@myheartmap) or read how the contest has gone global in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Previous Spotlights

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Past Events

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