Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion
Judith Long Named Chief of DGIM at Penn
Dr. Long's research includes studies of the effectiveness of peer mentoring for Veterans with diabetes.
CHERP’s Judith A. Long, MD has been named Division of General Internal Medicine Chief in the Department of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia, effective July 1, 2015.
"This is as exciting as it is challenging," said Long, a CHERP Core Investigator, VA Physician and Penn faculty member for16 years. "General Internal Medicine is in the thick of the reforms now sweeping health care. We want to lead the way in Penn's efforts in areas like population health, primary care redesign, and quality improvement."
Penn’s Division of General Internal Medicine (DGIM) oversees more than 100 clinicians across a variety of inpatient and outpatient sites, including the Philadelphia VA Medical Center the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Penn Medicine Radnor, PennCare facilities, and GoodShepherd Penn Partners' Institute for Rehabilitation Medicine.
The Division is also responsible for a major part of the clinical teaching of medical students and residents in the various facilities and is at the center of health policy and health services research at the University of Pennsylvania. Among the Division’s investigators are CHERP core faculty David Asch, MD, MBA,; Andy Epstein, PhD; Said Ibrahim, MD, MPH; Peter Groeneveld, MD, MS; Mitesh Patel, MD, MSHP; Daniel Polsky, PhD; Marilyn Schapira, MD, MPH; Judy Shea, PhD; Kevin Volpp, MD, PhD; and Rachel Werner, MD, PhD.
Long, also a health services researcher, has focused her research on the social determinants of health and health care as they pertain to socioeconomic and racial disparities. Her work evaluating peer-to-peer mentoring as an intervention to improve glucose control among adult diabetic patients recently received widespread national attention. Other work in this area includes a VA Investigator Initiated Research (IIR) study evaluating the long term effectiveness of peer mentors for Veterans with poorly controlled diabetes and a recently completed NIH R01 funded randomized controlled trial of peer mentors and financial incentives for low-income populations with poorly controlled diabetes from West Philadelphia. The VA study also evaluates if mentees can become effective mentors. Additionally, she is currently the primary investigator with co-investigators Shreya Kangovi, MD, MSHP and David Grande, MD, MPP, of a three-year, $1.9 million PCORI grant evaluating a community health worker (CHW) intervention for low-income chronically ill patients with multiple comorbidities. The Philadelphia VA Medical Center is one of three sites in which the intervention is being implemented.
Long said she intends to continue her research as DGIM Chief and will also continue to see patients. "I have seen patients at the VA since 1999, and I think nothing like actual practice enables you to understand the day-to-day clinical realities of an organization," she said.
Long is an Associate Professor of Medicine at both the Philadelphia VA Medical Center and the Perelman School , and Co-Director of the Philadelphia VA Center for the Evaluation of Patient Aligned Care Teams (CEPACT). The Center’s current focus is on how best to improve patient engagement and diminish disparities in satisfaction with care.
While Long plans to continue as Co-Director of Penn's Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Clinical Scholars Program, she will step down from her position as Director of Penn's Master of Science in Health Policy Research program and as primary investigator of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) funded Primary Care Physician-Scientist Fellowship program.
Long received a BA in biology from the University of Chicago in 1987 and an MD from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1993. She did her residency in primary care internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco; was a Clinical Educator Fellow at Penn from 1996-97; and was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at Yale University from 1997-99.
