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EVENT: John W. Rowe, M.D., Chairman and CEO of Aetna Inc., one of the nation's leading health care and related benefits organizations, will address the rising cost of health-care and possible solutions to the problem when he presents the 2004 Raymond C. Grandon Lecture: “Health-Care Costs--Why Are They Rising?”

DATE: Thursday, May 6

TIME: Noon to 2 p.m.

LOCATION: Thomas Jefferson University Hospital
DePalma Auditorium
Thompson Building, Basement Level
(Enter through Foerderer Pavilion, 11th Street between Walnut and Sansom Streets)

BACKGROUND: Prior to joining Aetna, Dr. Rowe served as president and chief executive officer of Mount Sinai NYU Health (1998-2000), one of the nation's largest academic health care organizations. Prior to the Mount Sinai NYU Health merger, Dr. Rowe was president of the Mount Sinai Hospital and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City (1988-1998).

Before joining Mount Sinai, Dr. Rowe was a professor of Medicine and the founding director of the Division on Aging at Harvard Medical School, and Chief of Gerontology at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital. He has authored over 200 scientific publications, mostly on the physiology of the aging process, and a leading textbook of geriatric medicine. Dr. Rowe has received many honors and awards for his research and health policy efforts regarding care of the elderly. Dr. Rowe was director of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Aging and is co-author, with Robert Kahn, Ph.D., of Successful Aging (Pantheon, 1998). He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), and is Chairman of the Board of Trustees at the University of Connecticut.

Raymond C. Grandon, M.D., for whom the lecture series is named, earned the doctor of medicine degree from Jefferson Medical College in 1946. After receiving his medical degree, Dr. Grandon entered private practice as a solo practitioner. An internist with a special interest in cardiovascular care, Dr. Grandon was responsible for the first televised heart operation in the United States. He was also a clinical investigator of cardio-active drugs and helped to coordinate the nation’s first commercially successful cardiac rehabilitation program.

The Grandon lecture is sponsored by the Department of Health Policy at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University. The department, under the direction of David Nash, M.D., the Dr. Raymond C. and Doris N. Grandon Professor and Chair of Health Policy, develops long-term strategies to prepare health-care providers for the challenges of a dynamic health-care environment. The office serves as a key contributor to the education and research programs of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and Jefferson Medical College.