John Hansen-Flaschen

As the Paul F. Harron Jr. Family Emeritus Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, John Hansen-Flaschen MD works as a practicing pulmonologist and a career medical educator focusing on medical ethics and humanism. From 1990 through 2014, he served as the Chief of the Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Division at Penn, growing the faculty from 11 to nearly 60 academic physicians and PhD scientists. In 2009, Dr. Hansen-Flaschen founded nationally renowned Paul Harron Lung Center at Penn with the benefit of a major gift from family members of one of his patients. From 2013 to 2017, Dr. Hansen-Flaschen served as the founding Editor of the international medical journal, the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.

Now partly retired, Dr. Hansen-Flaschen remains active in direct patient care, teaching, and patient advocacy. In 2017, he founded the Fishman Program for Home Assisted Ventilation at Penn. This endowed program serves adults who require long-term mechanically assisted ventilation for chronic respiratory failure. Application of the latest technology for respiratory support enables people who are disabled by chronic nerve, muscle, or lung diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, and COPD to live at home and engage in their communities. Dr. Hansen-Flaschen encourages and teaches young pulmonologists nationwide to enter the emerging subspecialty of chronic respiratory failure and he advocates for improving health insurance coverage for home ventilators.

Dr. Hansen-Flaschen’s scholarly interests focus on reducing the burden of advanced lung disease for patients and family members. Advancing that goal, he has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles in leading medical journals and has lectured internationally. His many honors include the Lindback Award, Penn’s highest teaching honor, the Praxis Award in Professional Ethics from Villanova University, the Leonard P Lang Award of the American Lung Association, and the Career Achievement Award of the American Thoracic Society.