David Asch

Executive Director David Asch is the executive director of the Penn Medicine Center for Health Care Innovation and the director of the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program and the National Clinician Scholars Program. He is the John Morgan professor of medicine and medical ethics and health policy at the Perelman School of Medicine, and a professor of health care management and operations, information and decisions at the Wharton School. David's research aims to understand and improve how physicians and patients make medical choices, including the adoption of new pharmaceuticals or medical technologies, the purchase of health or life insurance, and personal health behaviors. His research combines elements of economic analysis with moral and psychological theory and marketing in the field now called behavioral economics. He is the author of more than 300 published papers. Nationally, he has received best paper of the year awards from the Society for Medical Decision Making, the Society of General Internal Medicine, the American Risk and Insurance Association, the British Medical Journal, the American Journal of Public Health, and AcademyHealth. Dr. Asch received the Alice Hersh New Investigator Award from AcademyHealth (1997), the Outstanding Investigator Award from the American Federation for Medical Research (1999), the Research Mentorship Award from the Society of General Internal Medicine (2004), the VA Under Secretary’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Health Services Research (2008), the Alpha Omega Alpha Robert J. Glaser Distinguished Teacher Award from the Association of American Medical Colleges (2009), and the John M. Eisenberg National Award for Career Achievement in Research from the Society of General Internal Medicine (2010). He is an elected member of the Association of American Physicians and the National Academy of Medicine. David received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, his medical degree from Weill-Cornell Medical College, and his MBA in health care management and decision sciences from the Wharton School. He was a resident in internal medicine and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania.