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Who and What We Are / 141 medical information for laypersons, new facilities, and new members of its Delaware valley hospitals and physician practice groups. to track the success in achieving print, television, and radio media placements, the regional Communications Department published a monthly summary called “AHerF Delaware valley in the news” that tabulated the number of national, local, and regional placements of each type of coverage and included copies of print media stories. Community Relations As part of its operational strategy, AHerF also established a regional Community relations Office for the Delaware valley. its purpose was to enable AHerF to approach and respond to the region’s many communities as a unified system with activities which are strategic and linked to AHerF’s mission . . . , and which meet the community ’s health care needs; to facilitate the development of region-wide community priorities, strategic planning and policy; to provide a centralized point of review of community investments; and to provide an office which serves AHerF’s health services, academic and corporate sectors through its clearinghouse, coordination and communication activities.14 Among the functions based on this purpose, the office maintained a “community activities database.” its categories included “charitable activity,” defined as “activities conducted by AHerF faculty, staff and students which will benefit targeted community groups or charitable organizations, such as monetary donations, food, clothing, and blood drives.”15 Corporate Sponsorships AHerF also cultivated its image as a corporation that sponsored a variety of both nonprofit and for-profit ventures, which served too as a marketing technique. For example, as the media reported in its extensive coverage of the system’s eastern region financial collapse, in the months before it declared bankruptcy AHerF had made a quarterly payment on its annual $1.36 million promotional contract with the philadelphia eagles football team. Cultivation of a different type of image, seeking to convey the organization ’s academic orientation, is illustrated by AuHs’s sponsoring the first annual Jewish Bioethics Conference in may 1998, cosponsored by other enti14 . “purpose of the Office,” AHerF regional Community relations Office Delaware valley, november 10, 1995. 15. AHerF Delaware valley Community Activities Database (draft), Community relations Office, september 27, 1995. 142 / Chapter 7 ties, including the university of pennsylvania’s Center for Bioethics and the Center for Judaic studies of Boston university, with Abdelhak as honorary chair of the conference committee. Economic Impact As a function of its expansion into pennsylvania’s largest cross-state health care system, AHerF also could point to its substantial economic impact on the commonwealth. As early as 1974, while its growth both in pittsburgh and the Delaware valley was just beginning to mushroom, a study was conducted to measure the economic impact of the state’s medical centers of excellence (mCes), which included AHerF-owned institutions. On the basis of the calculations they used to analyze the direct and indirect expansion of the state’s economy attributable to AHerF and its impact on state government revenues, the consultants who did the study for the economic Development partnership task Force on mCes found that “there can be no doubt, based on the evidence of these numbers, that AHerF is a major economic engine in the state. AHerF-owned institutions are drivers of economic growth, job creation, and government revenue for the Commonwealth of pennsylvania.”16 Innovative Training Programs: ELAM in addition to its in-house Allegheny executive leadership institute, AHerF developed and sponsored an executive leadership in Academic medicine (elAm) program for women. through what it promoted as a unique endeavor, it presented itself as an institution that valued and fostered leadership roles for women in academic medicine. While the program brochure presented elAm as a mCp-Hu school of medicine enterprise, it emphasized its Woman’s medical College lineage. “the medical College of pennsylvania, founded in 1850 as the country’s first medical school for women . . . is continuing its longstanding commitment to advancing the careers of women in medicine by offering the . . . elAm program.” the elAm announcement emphasized that women were not “moving into leadership positions in medical schools at the rate that their numbers in academic medicine would promise.” to remedy that situation, elAm was marketed as an “explicit intervention,” “the only in-depth national program” designed “to enable women to advance to senior administrative roles, thereby contributing to the development of an organizational culture 16. tripp, umbach & Associates. January 1995. the impact of AHerF on the Commonwealth of pennsylvania. executive summary. Document provided to the Acadia institute by the mCp...

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