Marilyn Schapira, MD, MPH

Professor of Medicine

Marilyn Schapira, MD, MPH is a native of Montreal, Canada.   She is a graduate of Oberlin College and the University of Michigan School of Medicine and Public Health where she obtained an MD and MPH in Health Planning and Administration.  She trained in Internal Medicine at Emory University and in a General Internal Medicine fellowship program at Duke University.   Dr. Schapira is currently a Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in the Division of General Medicine and the Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion (CHERP) at the Philadelphia VA.  Dr. Schapira has been funded by the Department of Defense, NCI, VA HSR&D, and the American Cancer Society in the area of health numeracy, risk communication and medical decision making pertaining to cancer screening and treatment.  Her work includes the development and evaluation of patient decision support tools. She has developed a bilingual health numeracy measure using item response theory (IRT) methods and evaluated the test for use at point of care prior to the cancer treatment consultation to help clinicians tailor their communication to the patient’s level of health numeracy.  Dr. Schapira is pursuing additional studies related to risk communication and medical decision making in the context of chronic disease management and cancer prevention, screening, and treatment decisions.  She is currently funded by a VA HSR&D Merit Award to develop and evaluate value preference assessment and shared decision making strategies for lung cancer screening among Veterans.  Dr. Schapira is a member and recent Council member (2014-2017) of the Society of General Internal Medicine, past President of the Society for Medical Decision Making (2011-2012) and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Medical Decision Making.  She is a senior fellow of the Leonard David Institute, the co-leader of the Cancer Control Research program at the Abramson Cancer Center, an Associate Director for the National Clinician Scholar program at the University of Pennsylvania, and a graduate of the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) program.