Dollars for Profs
Dig Into University Researchers' Outside Income and Conflicts of Interest
Published Dec. 6, 2019
This database was last updated in December 2019 and should only be used as a historical snapshot. There may be new or amended records not reflected here.
Conflict of Interest
Institutions must file significant disclosures to the National Institutes of Health if they determine financial relationships could affect the design, conduct or reporting of the NIH-funded research. The NIH provided us with their entire financial conflict of interest database, with filings from 2012 through 2019.
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Benjamin Levi
Pennsylvania State Univ Hershey Med Ctr, Department: Social Sciences
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Making Your Wishes Known, LLC
Equity Interest - Non-publicly traded entity ( e.g., stock, stock option, or other ownership interest)
Dr. Michael Green and Dr. Benjamin Levi are the co-owners of a privately-held entity, Making Your Wishes Known, LLC (MYWK). They have developed interactive software that will assist advanced care planning and end-of-life decision making (the Decision Aid used in this study). This intellectual property is licensed to MYWK by Penn State Research Foundation, and is sublicensed to a company called Vital Decisions. Of note, the investigators do not report any income from the intellectual property in the past 12 months. MYWK, LLC has a (b)(4) equity interest in the technology business value of Vital Decisions; this interest would be realized upon the sale of Vital Decisions. The investigators do not report any other Significant Financial Interest related to Vital Decisions.
Although the Intellectual Property rights are held with Penn State Research Foundation (associated with the awardee institution) and licensed to MYWK, Penn State University policy (as of 2018) does not exclude Penn State-owned intellectual property from the definition of Significant Financial Interest. Additionally, although there has been no revenue from the intellectual property, our institution reviews any intellectual property rights, regardless of value, if related to human subjects research.
Exploring how spokespersons understand and experience surrogate decision-making
Project Narrative The importance of advance care planning (ACP) is widely appreciated, however, our recent study has shown that ACP interventions that are effective for patients and clinicians do not work as well for spokespersons of patients with advanced, serious illnesses. Our proposed project will help us gain a better understanding of how spokespersons understand their role as surrogate decision-makers, what helps them feel prepared for that role, and what factors contribute to the distress often experienced when making surrogate medical decisions. Results from this study will help researchers and clinicians create ACP interventions that better meet the emotional and other needs of spokespersons who are called upon make life-or-death medical decisions for patients who cannot speak for themselves.
Filed on September 25, 2018.
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Benjamin Levi filed other conflict of interest disclosures with the NIH:
| Name | Institution | Type | Company | Disclosed Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Benjamin Levi | Pennsylvania State Univ Hershey Med Ctr | Conflict of Interest | Making Your Wishes Known, LLC | $0 - $4,999 |
| Benjamin Levi | Pennsylvania State Univ Hershey Med Ctr | Conflict of Interest | Making your Wishes Known, LLC | $0 - $4,999 |
Notes: When a more specific filing date is not available for an individual financial disclosure or conflict of interest form, we use the year the form was filed. If the year was not disclosed, we report the range of years covered by our public records requests. In a few cases, a start date was provided instead of a filing date. In those cases, we use the start date instead.
Fewer than 10% of records from the University of Florida and fewer than 1% of records from the University of Texas system were removed because they did not contain enough information.
ProPublica obtained additional financial disclosures and conflict of interest forms that we have not yet digitized and added to the database. You can download those disclosures in the ProPublica Data Store.