Raina Merchant
Raina is Penn Medicine Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer. She is a tenured Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and has secondary appointments in the Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care, Division of General Internal Medicine, and Division of Health Policy. She is the inaugural Director of the Penn Medicine Center for Digital Health and Co-Director of the Penn National Clinician Scholars Program (the legacy program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program). Raina’s research is at the intersection of digital media and health. She has specifically conducted projects evaluating health behaviors and communication using digital platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Instagram, Reddit, and Google. One of her projects involves “banking language” through the development of a unique longitudinal database of social media data merged with health record data. Much of her work also bridges new technologies in the fields of cardiovascular health, mental health, cancer care, disaster medicine, public health, and resuscitation science. Raina has been continuously funded by the NIH since 2011. She is currently the PI of 2 R01s, a K24, and an R21 Research Grant. She has over 180 peer-reviewed publications in journals such as NEJM, JAMA, Circulation, and Health Affairs. Her work has been featured in Wired, the Economist, New York Times, the Atlantic, and others. She is a member of the editorial board of JAMA. She is an Aspen Health Innovators Fellow and was recognized by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as one of 10 investigators likely to have a significant impact on the future of health and healthcare in the U.S. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.
Education
MSHPR
University of Pennsylvania
MD
University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine
BA
Yale University
Appointments & Affiliations
Professor of Emergency Medicine
Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
Associate Vice President
Digital Health
Chief Transformation Officer & Vice President
University of Pennsylvania Health System
Senior Fellow
Institute for Biomedical Informatics; Penn Center for Public Health Initiatives
Co-Director
National Clinician Scholars Program, University of Pennsylvania
Director
Center for Digital Health, University of Pennsylvania
Affiliated Faculty
Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics
Member
National Academy of Medicine