Other Closely Affilifated Centers at Penn

The Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC)
The APPC was established in 1994 to create a community of scholars that would address public policy issues at the local, state and federal levels. It has offices in Philadelphia and Washington, DC. Consistent with the mission of the Annenberg School for Communication, APPC has four ongoing foci: information and society; media and the developing mind; media and the dialogue of democracy; and health communication. Martin Fishbein, PhD directs the Health Communication division, which offers several postdoctoral training opportunities. Recent APPC postdoctoral scholars have focused on the application of the theory of reasoned action in HIV and STD research, and on the evaluation of anti-drug advertisements.

Health Communication Group at the Annenberg School
Robert Hornik and Martin Fishbein lead a group of four faculty, six senior staff and post-docs, and 15 graduate students in perhaps the nation's leading research center in the media, health, and health policy. The center is a unique resource for Scholars who wish to design and evaluate the effects of media interventions on health. The Center undertakes research in two broad areas of health communication: (1) studies of the effects of deliberate mass media interventions and (2) studies of the general effects of mass media coverage of health issues on health behavior. The group has also studied health behavior change interventions using modalities besides the mass media. Methods include tightly controlled experiments looking for effects of exposure to particular ads on youth beliefs, field experiments examining behavioral effects of multi-faceted interventions, multi-year nationwide longitudinal sample surveys in the U.S. and in other countries evaluating major health campaigns, and content analyses of media coverage relevant to health behavior matched through time series analyses with evidence of behavior change.

Boettner Center of Financial Gerontology
The Boettner Center of Financial Gerontology was established at the School of Social Work in 1986. Its applied research agenda embraces both population aging and individual aging, and focuses on the multiple relationships among demographic trends, individual attitudes, financial security, and life satisfaction during the life cycle and across generations. The Center pays particular attention to the economic and demographic characteristics of the baby boom, and how its middle-aging shapes the financial perceptions, fears, and expectations of the United States in the first decades of the 21st century. The Center's activities promote collaboration among gerontology, social work, and financial services professionals. The Center also sponsors educational programs for corporate, academic, government and public audiences.

The Campbell Collaboration
The Campbell Collaboration, within the Graduate School of Education, is an emerging effort to systematically review the effects of social and educational policies and practices. It is modeled after its sibling organization, the Cochrane Collaboration, which prepares and maintains systematic reviews of the effects of interventions in health care. These systematic reviews are designed to meet the needs of those with a strong interest in high quality evidence on "what works." The objective is to stimulate empirical methodological research to improve the validity, relevance and precision of systematic reviews and the randomized trials and non-randomized trials on which they are based.

This group, with support from RWJF, has begun a pilot post-doctoral fellowship program for two fellows beginning September 2001 and ending August 2003. Fellows will conduct independent research that entails a) front-end design of evaluation of new initiatives, b) secondary analyses of rich data sets or 3) high-quality systematic reviews of studies of the effects of interventions.

The Cartographic Modeling Lab (CML)
This is a joint venture between Penn's Graduate School of Fine Arts and its School of Social Work, in partnership with the City of Philadelphia. The lab is the repository of city information on income, education, crime, health, social services and other measures organized graphically within a high resolution map of the city. The data can support any level of analysis, from the individual's block, neighborhood, or service area. Spatial statistical models using geographic information systems are used to understand the clustering of events and the role of contextual factors that impact on phenomena at different levels. An important side benefit of this work is that the third party relationship with Penn, and the software developed for the lab, have overcome citizen privacy and data security problems and have enabled cooperation and data sharing between city agencies that was previously impossible. Current projects span a wide variety of topics in firearms tracking and public safety, social welfare, children and youth, housing, homelessness, the environment, public education, and public health.

Center for Bioethics
The Center for Bioethics is an interdisciplinary unit that advances scholarly and public understanding of ethical, legal, social, and public policy issues in health care. Its faculty carry appointments in a wide range of schools and departments, including philosophy, medicine, nursing, law, social science, public policy, the Wharton School, communications, and the allied health professions. Center faculty interests include ethical issues in: genetics, pediatrics, critical care, health policy, human experimentation, decision-making authority and capacity, resource allocation, transplantation, and long-term care. The center sponsors a variety of lectures, symposia, and workshops, which are open to all members of the Penn community.

The Center conducts educational activities for professionals and the public. Its Bioethics Internet Project (www.bioethics.net) is the most-utilized bioethics resource on the Internet, receiving as many as 600,000 visits per month from professionals, patients, students, and teachers around the world. In 1997, the Center for Bioethics developed one of the first - and largest - master's programs in bioethics, geared to individuals with a professional degree. This program integrates training in empirical methods, liberal arts and medical school teaching. In addition, the Center for Bioethics collaborates with the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics to offer bioethics training through the Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology program.

Center for Children's Policy, Practice and Research (CCPPR)
The CCPPR began in 1998 as a joint program of the Schools of Medicine, Social Work and Law. It mobilizes the resources of law, medicine, social work, education and arts and sciences in the search for innovative solutions to the crises facing America's children. The Center's structure employs interdisciplinary, child-centered teams to develop policy, research and practice initiatives towards the goal of preserving children's developmental potential, and assuring the rights of America's children to be safe and secure in their own homes. The four "core" faculty are joined by many "associate" faculty from schools throughout the University. In addition, the CCPPR includes "fellows from community practice" recruited from key non-governmental and governmental organizations.

Center for Community Partnerships (CCP).
The CCP was founded in 1992 and is based on three core propositions: 1) Penn's future and the future of Philadelphia are intertwined; 2) Penn can make a significant contribution to improving the quality of life in Philadelphia; and 3) Penn can enhance its overall mission of advancing and transmitting knowledge by helping to improve the quality of life in Philadelphia.

The CCP is University-wide and engages in three types of activities: academically based community service, direct traditional service, and community development. Academically based community service is at the core of the CCP's work. It is service rooted in and intrinsically linked to teaching and/or research, and encompasses problem-oriented research and teaching, as well as service learning emphasizing student and faculty reflection on the service experience. More that 95 courses (from a wide range of disciplines and Penn schools) link faculty and trainees to work in the community.

Center for Gerontologic Nursing Science
The Center for Gerontologic Nursing Science is a nationally recognized center for research in aging by nurse scholars. It builds on the work of faculty in the School of Nursing known for their research on frail elders. Its research agenda is responsive to national priorities and is focused on innovative interventions that promote health and increase quality of life for older adults. Studies have examined ways to prevent, delay, or shortens institutionalization; to facilitate transitions for older persons across the continuum of care; and to improve outcomes and decrease cost of care, with particular attention to integrated, interdisciplinary and nurse-managed models of care. As part of its mission, the Center attracts to gerontologic research the ablest undergraduate and graduate nursing students and postgraduate scholars, and prepares them for leadership roles in this field.

The Center runs a NRSA-funded post-doctoral fellowship program, "Nursing Research: Psychosocial Oncology and HIV/AIDS." It prepares nurse researchers to conceptualize and implement clinical research in psychosocial oncology and HIV/AIDS, including psychosocial research as it affects seriously ill adults.

The Center for Greater Philadelphia (CGP)
The CGP is an applied public policy program through the Provost's office that promotes regional cooperation among the public and private sectors in the Greater Philadelphia region. Since 1985, the CGP has served as a neutral third-party convener and provider of objective analysis and jargon-free reports on key public policy issues. Through its efforts, CGP hopes to help establish a stronger region, an improved quality of life for all its residents, and a "civic society" in metropolitan Philadelphia whose members see themselves as part of a unified whole. The CGP is supported by over thirty area corporations, the Pew Charitable Trusts, William Penn Foundation, Knight Foundation, and Annenberg Foundation.

Specific activities include convening ten annual Southeastern Pennsylvania State Legislators' Conferences, the Regional Agenda-Setting Process, and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Municipalities Conference. The CGP has also organized the Southeastern Pennsylvania Standards Consortium, with 31 school districts, and the Southern New Jersey Standards Consortium, with 11 districts, to work collaboratively on standards-based reform. The CGP's Greater Philadelphia High School Partnership brings together 1,400 students from 80 city and suburban high schools to carry out joint service-learning projects.

Center for Health, Achievement, Neighborhood, Growth, and Ethnic Studies (CHANGES)
CHANGES was established in July of 1994 in the Graduate School of Education. Its mission is to promote a more holistic understanding of urban youth, by examining the multiple contexts in which youth develop cognitively, physically, emotionally, as well as socially. Its research is designed to contribute to understandings about the normal life-course experiences of urban adolescents. CHANGES involves graduate and undergraduate students in its research. Ongoing studies include a five-year longitudinal project that represents a sample of extremely impoverished, southern, inner-city, and mostly male adolescents. This project is known as the Promotion of Academic Competence. The Center has also recently begun pilot work on a longitudinal study of economically disadvantaged Philadelphia high school students who have displayed above average academic performance in spite of their economic challenges.

Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research (CHOPR)
The CHOPR is an interdisciplinary research and research training enterprise focusing on health outcomes research and health workforce policy studies. It was established in 1989 within the School of Nursing, and draws its faculty from nursing, sociology, demography, medicine, management, and economics. The center was established in response to the need for better information about and greater understanding of crucial issues in health and health care that require nurse involvement.

CHOPR provides advanced training in nursing outcomes research through a formal interdisciplinary program of pre-doctoral and post-doctoral study comprising the conceptual and empirical foundations, and the methodological approaches and statistical tools, of outcomes research. The program provides for a full complement of coursework and mentorship in research methodology, culminating in the development of skills and experience in research grant submission and peer-reviewed data-based publications. The program has a strong quantitative methods focus and prepares researchers to use administrative data, as well as social survey techniques. Funding is available for three pre-doctoral students and four post-doctoral fellows through a National Institute of Nursing, NIH, and NRSA award.

Center for Leadership and Change Management
The Center for Leadership and Change Management at the Wharton School is dedicated to improving the basic and practical understanding of leadership and change. The Center's mission is to: stimulate basic research and practical application in the area of strategic leadership and change management; enhance understanding of how to build and develop leadership in and for organizations; and assist the leadership and change agendas of the University, its faculty and affiliates.

Center programs provide support for individual and cross-disciplinary team-based research projects on organizational leadership, strategy, and change; sponsorship of periodic conferences on leadership and change management for both university scholars and company managers; dissemination of practical summaries of current research on leadership and change to the academic and management communities through the monthly electronic Wharton Leadership Digest and other avenues; and training in the area of leadership development.

Center for Mental Health Policy and Services Research (CMHPSR)
The CMHPSR was established in 1986 in the School of Medicine and consists of multidisciplinary faculty and staff interested in community mental health. The CMHPSR researches the organization, financing, and management structure of mental health care systems and the delivery of mental health services. The Center uses the results of its research and evaluation efforts to inform the decision making of public policy makers at local, state, and national levels.

The CMHPSR provides one- and two-year post-doctoral research fellowships. The program provides an excellent opportunity for social scientists to improve their knowledge of mental health systems and gain experience in applying qualitative and quantitative research methods to the evaluation of mental health systems. The research focuses on vulnerable populations such as persons with serious mental illness and substance abuse problems. Post-doctoral positions are available in the following areas: Epidemiology of Mental Illness, Managed Behavioral Care, Evaluation of Innovative Programs, Services for Geriatric Populations, Vocational Rehabilitation, and Cost Effectiveness and Pharmacoeconomic Studies. The program draws a wide variety of applicants from disciplines such as anthropology, demography, social welfare policy, health administration, and clinical and community psychology.

Center for Research and Evaluation of Social Policy (CRESP)
CRESP, housed in the Graduate School of Education, focuses on generating, reviewing, or analyzing quality evidence on social programs. Although a major focus is on education, CRESP has links to other areas that affect or are influenced by education initiatives, such as crime, welfare, and health. CRESP is a focal point for cross-divisional, department, and school collaboration. Currently, research is underway on children at risk of physical violence; state-level school restructuring efforts; and teacher-based measurement of the adjustment of children.

CRESP also serves as a vehicle for attracting guest lecturers whose interest lie in evidence and social policy in a variety of areas. These speakers include experts in housing, employment and training programs for women, education reforms, health risk prevention programs and others. This attraction is very important in providing faculty, students and trainees a broad view of how evidence is generated and used in diverse policy disciplines.

Center for the Study of Youth Policy (CYSP)
The CSYP has been part of the School of Social Work since 1993. It was created to provide information about problems affecting children and youth, and to frame the debate and advocate for solutions to these problems through planning, research, public discussion and systems redesign. CSYP serves as a policy research resource and national clearinghouse for professional organizations, policy makers, and child advocates interested in recent developments related to juvenile justice and child welfare systems at the local, state, national, and international levels.

Current projects include: a national survey of at-risk youth to assess the prevalence of risk behavior such as smoking, alcohol and drug use, violence, and suicide; a gun tracking program, which is developing a Geographic Information System application that will enable law enforcement to track all guns used illegally in Philadelphia; a needs assessment of Latino youth in suburban counties surrounding Philadelphia; and an evaluation of the Safe Schools, Health Students initiative in the Philadelphia Public School District.

Center for Urban Ethnography (CUE)
CUE is a research center within the Graduate School of Education. Since 1976, it has conducted a wide range of research on urban issues. The expertise of the CUE staff and faculty associates is nationally recognized in the areas of practitioner research, ethnographic research design, school and community studies, qualitative evaluation and technical assistance, and monitoring classroom instruction and learning environments.

CUE convenes the largest annual meeting of qualitative researchers in education, the Ethnography in Education Forum, which is presently in its twenty-second year. This Forum provides an excellent opportunity for participants to share ideas on multicultural and inter-ethnic issues in education, ethnographic evaluation, action research in education settings, language and literacy, and uses of ethnography in science and math education.

Center for Urban Health Research
This center in the School of Nursing builds partnerships between Penn and its urban communities through research, education, and clinical practice that will improve the health and quality of life for underserved, highly vulnerable, and ethnically diverse populations. Its research goals are to: identify the behavioral determinants of healthy lifestyles; design, evaluate, and disseminate theory-based behavioral interventions to reduce health risks; develop research strategies to promote improvement in the quality of life and health among urban populations across the life span; develop new collaborations and expand the scientific base of nursing research and practice related to health promotion and disease prevention for vulnerable urban populations; and develop and implement a model program for the development of scholars who will focus on urban health care research. It also conducts a monthly seminar series highlighting state-of-the-art research and outcomes related to urban health.

Fels Center of Government
For 65 years, the Fels Center has trained leaders for public service. Housed in the School of Arts & Sciences, it draws its faculty from other schools as well, including Wharton, Annenberg, Education, Fine Arts and Social Work. Through its Masters of Government Administration program, and its research centers, the Fels Center strives to build a bridge between knowledge and power, between the tools of research and the application of best practices in government. Hallmarks of the Fels tradition are its emphasis on financial management and its development of leaders who understand the interplay of politics and analysis, organizational structures and human interactions.

Current projects include linking government programs to people in need of them on high-risk blocks in West Philadelphia; a program for training elected and staff officials of the Pennsylvania legislature; and development a geographic information system for analyzing the operations and needs for state programs down to the street address level all over the state. One of Fels research units, the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, has a large grant from the National Institute of Justice to develop early warning systems for a resurgence of youth violence. The Jerry Lee Center provides doctoral level training in criminology, and is addressing central questions about the causes and prevention of crime.

Firearm Injury Center at Penn (FICAP)
FICAP was established in the Division of Traumatology and Surgical Critical Care in 1997 with funding from the Joyce Foundation. With core faculty expertise in medicine, nursing, social work, criminology, and epidemiology, FICAP is applying data-driven strategies and using community partnerships to reduce firearm violence. It is also producing a new generation of scholars in firearm violence research.

FICAP's premier initiative is the Medical Professionals as Advocates Program. FICAP has established three firearm injury control sites based in the trauma centers of small and medium sized cities, where trauma surgeons and health care professionals are spearheading a public health campaign to lower the toll of firearm violence within their communities. FICAP researchers have collected detailed data about firearm violence in these communities. The program combines data analysis with advocacy, using the credibility of health professionals and grass-roots coalitions to galvanize these cities to seek local solutions to their own gun violence problems.

Health and Societies Program
The program was started in 2000 by the School of Arts & Sciences (SAS) to take advantage of and strengthen Penn's long tradition of research and teaching excellence in areas related to society, health, and medicine. Core faculty come mostly from the History and Sociology of Science, Anthropology, and Sociology departments and from the School of Medicine. The program has developed a new interdisciplinary undergraduate Health and Societies major. The interdisciplinary organization of the major allows students to take advantage of synergies among different scholars, departments, and fields as well as being the best way to research, teach, and study the serious intellectual problem of the relationships between health and societies. Students in this major build an individualized concentration around particular Health and Societies problems (e.g., urban health) and are expected to carry out either a substantial research project or participate in community-based health project.

The program has begun to expand to include greater integration of health and societies graduate training in existing SAS departments as well as post-graduate training. Faculty of the program, along with Penn's African Health Group, recently received funding from the Ford Foundation to train medical students and population science graduate students together to conduct collaborative, population-based research in Ghana and Zimbabwe.

Institute for Environmental Studies (IES)
The IES, based in the School of Arts & Sciences, promotes cross-disciplinary collaborations in education and research in the area of environmental issues. These collaborative endeavors span basic and applied sciences, engineering, the social sciences, and the humanities. More than 50 faculty members are part of the IES, and are drawn from almost every school in the University. The research falls into four broad groups: Earth, Ecology, and Ecosystems; Environmental Toxicology; Environmental Engineering; and Environmental Policy. The IES also oversees graduate training leading to a Masters of Environmental Studies. The training program brings together researchers and practitioners in the physical and biological sciences, economics, social sciences, and other arts and sciences disciplines with professionals in planning, health care and the law. This multidisciplinary approach provides graduates with the breadth necessary to address the complexity of environment problems as well as the depth to provide specific expertise in environmental issues and management.

Institute on Aging (IOA)
For 20 years, the IOA has served as Penn's umbrella organization for all aging-related activities. It promotes interdisciplinary educational and research programs that unite faculty from the Schools of Medicine, Nursing, Business, Law, Social Work, Engineering, and Arts and Sciences. The IOA includes 23 faculty members from the Division of Geriatric Medicine and over 160 IOA Fellows who are Penn faculty members with extensive experience and commitment to aging-related research, clinical service, and education. The IOA's research strengths span basic, translational, clinical, and health services research with special expertise in neurodegenerative disease, depression, cultural competency, end of life issues, and long term care settings. In conjunction with the Division of Geriatric Medicine, it offers a post-doctoral fellowship for physicians. The IOA provides research and mentoring opportunities in clinical epidemiology, health services research and policy, minority health, clinical sciences such as rehabilitation, geriatric psychiatry, and sleep disorders, and basic sciences, such as immunology and developmental biology. More than 200 physicians apply to the Geriatrics Fellowship Program, which accepts five fellows per year.

Partners for Child Passenger Safety
Established in 1997, the Partners for Child Passenger Safety program (PCPS) is a collaborative venture of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Penn, and the State Farm Insurance Companies. The central goal of this project is to save children's lives by increasing knowledge about children in motor vehicle crashes. Research work involves three concurrent parts:

• A large and comprehensive collection of data on 20,000 car crashes involving child passengers age 15 and under.
• In-depth studies of 600 selected crashes to determine the movement of children in the vehicle during impact and the presence or absence, and use or misuse, of restraint systems.
• A system to quickly identify significant successes or failures of current and emerging child safety devices and technology.

The Jerry Lee Center of Criminology
The Center's faculty have collaborated with over 30 police agencies around the world, evaluating policies designed to prevent crime, reduce domestic violence, get illegal guns off the streets, prevent police corruption, close down crack houses, and help victims of crime. The Center's quasi experimental approach to the reliability of crime reporting has been used by the Philadelphia Police Commissioner and crime prevention agencies around the country. Research led by Dr. Sherman has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Blair Government in Great Britain as the basis for its $400 million crime prevention program.

Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion
This VA-funded center directed by David Asch aims to understand and eliminate health and health care disparities. The center is structured to provide core support, in the form of statistical, technical, and methodologic expertise, seed funding, space, staffing, and other assistance toward the development of proposals fundable from other organizations. Given the overlap between the goals of this Center and the goals of the Health and Society Scholars Program, and given the overlapping leadership, this resource may become extremely valuable to Scholars.

Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics
Since 1967, LDI has been Penn's center for health services and policy research, education, and training. LDI is a cooperative venture among Penn's business and health professions schools (Wharton, Medicine, Nursing, and Dental Medicine). LDI Senior Fellows include more than 100 faculty from these schools as well as Arts & Sciences, Education, Social Work, Communications, and Law. Many of LDI's Senior Fellows are internationally recognized experts who represent a broad range of disciplines and expertise in such fields as: health and clinical economics; health care evaluation and management; health care organization and delivery; health care financing and insurance; provider and patient behavior; medical malpractice and tort reform; mental health policy and services delivery; aging and long-term care; medical sociology; medical ethics; and health professions education and planning.

LDI offers a wide range of training opportunities, including a NRSA Institutional Training Program in Advanced Health Services Research. Currently in its 15th year, the program provides doctoral training in health services research through Wharton's Health Care Systems Department. Currently, the program supports seven doctoral students. Other affiliated training programs include VA-supported postdoctoral fellowships in: health services research (for 2 PhDs each year); medical informatics (for 2 PhDs or MDs each year) and an ambulatory care fellowship in General Internal Medicine (for 4 MDs per year).

W.M. Krogman Center for Research in Child Growth and Development
The Krogman Growth Center is a university-wide, anthropolologically-oriented growth research center. Since its founding in 1947, the center has conducted numerous longitudinal studies of child growth, development, and health. Currently, the center is collaborating with the A.I. duPont Institute to conduct a longitudinal study of child health in the state of Delaware. Known as Child Quest 2000, this project seeks to analyze the health, socioeconomic, epidemiological and other factors that are associated with the low immunization rates and high infant morbidity of children. This longitudinal dataset could increase understanding of child health to a similar degree as the Framingham Heart Study did for the epidemiology of cardiovascular disease. In addition to research activities, the Krogman Growth Center serves as a referral clinic for the diagnosis of growth disorders and as a training center for physical anthropologists, biologists, dentists, physicians, and predoctoral dental and medical students interested in child growth and development.

National Center on Adult Literacy
The National Center on Adult Literacy (NCAL), based in the Graduate School of Education, was established by the U.S. Department of Education in 1990, with additional support from the Department of Labor, and the Department of Health and Human Services. In pursuit of improved literacy levels for all Americans, NCAL has three primary goals: to improve understanding of youth and adult learning, to foster innovation and increase effectiveness in youth and adult basic education and literacy work, and to expand access to information and build capacity for literacy and basic skills service provision. The center has taken the initiative for establishing a national agenda for adult literacy research and involves both experienced practitioners and leading researchers in the process. It initiates studies on key issues identified within this agenda and encourages and supports research on these issues by other qualified institutions and individuals. NCAL utilizes innovative technologies for dissemination, instructing, and publishing in the field of adult literacy.

The National Center on Fathers and Families (NCOFF)
The National Center on Fathers and Families (NCOFF) was established in 1994 at the Graduate School of Education, with core support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. An interdisciplinary policy research center, NCOFF is dedicated to research and practice that expands the knowledge base on father involvement and family development, and that informs policy designed to improve the well-being of children. It involves more than 30 faculty members from the Schools of Education, Social Work, Law, Medicine, Wharton, and Arts & Sciences.

NCOFF's research efforts are organized through the Family Development Study Group, which consists of interdisciplinary teams that integrate practice and policymaking into the design, development, and implementation of research studies. Study teams include researchers, practitioners, and policymakers who work together to examine practical applications, public policy, and social change. Current study teams address the following topics: Public Policy, Family Support, and Father Involvement; Theoretical and Conceptual Issues in Fathering; Father Involvement, and Family Support; Child Well-Being within Family, School, and Community Contexts; Family Structure in Historical and Contemporary Perspectives: Issues of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity; Education, Workforce, and the Economy; Life-Span and Family Life-Course Development; and Poverty and Social Vulnerability.

Population Studies Center
This School of Arts & Sciences center is the interdisciplinary home for population research at Penn. Most of the faculty is drawn from the departments of Sociology, Economics, Regional Science, Biology, and Anthropology in the School of Arts and Sciences; from the Annenberg School, the Wharton School, the School of Medicine, and the School of Nursing. Research by center faculty and associates emphasizes fertility, mortality, economic demography, aging, historical demography, and demography of race and ethnic groups. It offers training grants in demography, supported by grants from NICHD, NIA, and the Hewlett and Mellon Foundations. The Center is closely associated with the Graduate Group in Demography, which offers masters and doctoral degrees.

It also houses the Population Aging Research Center (PARC), established in 1994 with a grant from the NIA. PARC fosters research on the demography and economics of health and aging, linking faculty of the Population Studies Center and the wider Penn community. Research themes include intergenerational exchanges associated with population aging; aging in disadvantaged populations; and medical demography. PARC sponsors a monthly seminar series, and an on-line working paper series accessible over the Internet. In addition to ongoing research activities, PARC is committed to training new investigators through its pre- and post-doctoral training programs. Funded by the NIA, these programs sponsor two pre- and two post-doctoral trainees. The pre-doctoral program supports students who typically receive a degree in Demography, Sociology, or Economics. Post-doctoral fellowships are generally awarded for a two-year period and are designed to provide an opportunity for new investigators to enhance their analytic skills, develop their own research agendas, and participate in the PARC's ongoing research activities.

Social Work Mental Health Research Center (SWMHRC)
In 1998, the SWMHRC became one of eight social work research development centers funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. SWMHRC investigates mental health interventions, including clinical services and service delivery systems, for individuals with severe mental illness and their families. SWMHRC has three core areas of study: legal interventions, which examines the use of the courts and laws to effect services; managed health care, which investigates such issues as access and quality of services; and mental health and supportive service, which researches psychosocial treatments and support resources such as housing and consumer operated services. The Center draws faculty from the School of Social Work and the Department of Psychiatry, and offers one- and two-year post-doctoral research positions. The goal is to build leadership capacity among social work professionals to address the social welfare needs of populations with serious mental illness.

TraumaLink -The Interdisciplinary Pediatric Injury Control Research Center
TraumaLink is a comprehensive pediatric trauma research center based at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Penn. TraumaLink's mission is to create an interdisciplinary scientific foundation for pediatric injury control; specifically, to identify the causes and consequences of injury in sufficient detail that effective countermeasures can be developed and implemented in order to save children's lives. TraumaLink involves faculty from medicine, nursing, surgery, engineering, psychology, public health, communications, health education.

One of the most important projects at TraumaLink is "Partners for Child Passenger Safety," a unique research collaboration with State Farm Insurance Companies, the largest automobile insurer in the world. This partnership, awarded for its innovation in highway safety research, has created a nationally representative, child-focused injury surveillance system: in nearly real-time, State Farm claims representatives notify TraumaLink about crashes involving children and researchers conduct in-depth telephone interviews and on-site crash investigations in 15 states and the District of Columbia. Results from this ongoing study have pointed to serious gaps in booster seat use and have been used by legislative and regulatory agencies.

W.E.B. Du Bois Collective Research Institute
Established in 1998 in the Graduate School of Education, the W.E.B. Du Bois Collective Research Institute is a multidisciplinary academic enterprise. Its mission is to generate new knowledge in the form of cutting-edge research and scholarship that elucidates the complexities of the American urban experience, in order to influence scholars and public policy makers and, as a consequence, to enhance the lives of people living in urban settings. Its members represent the twelve schools of the University of Pennsylvania and continue the tradition of "engaged scholarship" in mental health issues raised by W.E.B. Du Bois in his landmark study, "The Philadelphia Negro." The Institute serves as a vehicle for dialogue and collaborative interdisciplinary research.

The Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center
The Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center conducts basic and applied research to promote effective policies and programs for low-probability events with potentially catastrophic consequences. The center is especially concerned with energy and environmental issues and with the integration of industrial risk management policies with insurance. Building on the disciplines of economics, decision sciences, finance, insurance and marketing, the Center's research program includes descriptive and prescriptive analyses. Descriptive research focuses on how individuals and organizations interact and make decisions regarding the management of risk. Prescriptive analyses propose ways that individuals and organizations, both private and governmental, can make better decisions regarding risk. The center is also concerned with promoting a dialogue among industry, government, interest groups, and academics through its research and policy publications and through sponsored workshops, roundtables, and forums.