Cabinet sec. Shalala to talk on health care

Donna Shalala of Health and Human Services will speak at Penn tomorrow. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala will speak tomorrow at a University forum on the challenges facing health care in the next century. Sponsored by the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, the symposium will take place at 4 p.m. in Stemmler Hall's Dunlop Auditorium, located in the Medical School complex. It will be open to all members of the University community. Shalala will join a diverse group of academic panelists, including Penn Center for Bioethics Director Arthur Caplan, to discuss the future of health care and take questions from the audience. Davis Institute Executive Director David Asch said Shalala, the longest-serving secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services' 19-year history, will offer a unique perspective as a national leader on social and health public policy. "She's about as prominent as you can get amongst leaders in health care," Asch said. He added that Shalala, a college educator before her entrance upon the national political scene, is "interested in interacting with students." Since being appointed to the Clinton cabinet post in 1993, Shalala has been in charge of the department's $381 billion budget and a wide variety of government programs -- including Medicare, Medicaid, the National Institutes of Health and federal welfare and children's programs. Under her leadership as secretary, the department has guided the 1996 welfare reform effort, established new programs to make health insurance available to an estimated 2.5 million children and taken on a variety of initiatives including fighting breast cancer, the use of tobacco by minors and the AIDS epidemic. Before joining the Clinton administration, Shalala was a nationally recognized leader in academia. As chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Madison from 1987 to 1993, she was the first woman to head a Big 10 university and was named by Business Week as one of the five best managers in public education. An acknowledged scholar of state and local government finance, she holds more than 12 honorary degrees and has been elected to the National Academy of Education, the National Academy of Public Administration and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Shalala is the third member of the Clinton cabinet to speak at Penn in the past year. Last week, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno gave the keynote address at a Fels Center of Government symposium attended by top Philadelphia and University officials on how government, business and community institutions can partner to fight crime. And former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin delivered the Commencement address in late May. Shalala last spoke at the University in April 1996, when she visisted Zellerbach Theatre to discuss women's health care issues as part of a program sponsored by the Trustees Council of Penn Women. The Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics is a University-wide center for health care research, policy analysis and executive education. Founded in 1967, the institute is a cooperative venture among the Wharton School, the School of Medicine, the Dental School and the School of Nursing.

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