Perry World House announced the inaugural cohort of researchers participating in its Faculty Fellowship Projects Initiative last week.
The program offers the center’s resources to Penn faculty members who are currently engaged in research projects with a potential global policy impact. Resources will be devoted to faculty leads of the six selected projects for a two year period, beginning in January 2027.
In a Sept. 8 announcement, PWH Deputy Director Michael Weisberg wrote that one of the center’s “greatest strengths” is its ability to connect Penn faculty with a broader network of policy practitioners.
Rather than acting as a grant, the program will serve as a two-year collaboration where researchers can leverage the center’s “resources, convening power, network, and ability” to effectively “translate academic research into policy action.”
The program also supports faculty in leading a policy-related event, workshop, two non-resident visiting fellows, and authoring a white paper that will be published on the center’s website. There may be additional project related activities and outputs agreed upon between the center and faculty members.
From now until December, the researchers will work with PWH program managers to design a plan of action for the center to formally support the projects. During the planning period, all involved parties will schedule activities for the first year of the collaboration, determine visiting fellows for each project, and finalize the budget.
The inaugural cohort leads projects on a wide range of global impact topics.
Penn Nursing Associate Dean of Global Engagement Carmen Alvarez is part of the cohort for her project, “From Scale to Sustainability: Strengthening the Community-Based Women’s Health Workforce.”
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Alvarez, the Afaf I. Meleis director of the Center for Global Women’s Health, wrote that she is “grateful to partner with Perry World House," in a statement. “Investing intentionally in the women who provide care is a powerful way to advance women’s health, and our work is about making these investments work and last,” she added.
Her project will launch with an event hosted at PWH, which will examine “the growing role of community-based health workers, doulas, and other paraprofessional health workers in advancing women’s health and health equity globally,” according to the announcement.
PWH will support Alvarez’s efforts to investigate how the women’s health workforce can be elevated to improve patient outcomes.
