John Hansen-Flaschen

John Hansen-Flaschen is an American pulmonologist, critical care physician, and medical educator. He is an emeritus professor of medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. His work has focused on pulmonary and critical care medicine, chronic respiratory failure, and palliative care for patients with advanced lung disease. He served as chief of Penn’s pulmonary and critical care division and was the founding editor-in-chief of the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.

Early life and education Hansen-Flaschen was born John Flaschen. He earned an A.B. in chemistry from Brown University in 1972 and received his M.D. from the New York University School of Medicine in 1976. He completed his internship, residency, chief residency, and pulmonary medicine fellowship at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

His clinical and academic work has focused on pulmonary and critical care medicine, chronic respiratory failure, and palliative care for patients with advanced lung disease.

From 1991 to 2014, he served as chief of the University's Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, overseeing its clinical, educational, and research programs. He also chaired the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania Ethics Committee and served as president of the University's Medical Faculty Senate.

In 2008, with the benefit of major gifts from surviving family members of Paul F. Harron, Hansen-Flaschen founded the Paul F. Harron Jr. Lung Center at Penn Medicine in 2008 and later established the Jay and Randy Fishman Program for Home Assisted Ventilation, which provides multidisciplinary care for adults with chronic respiratory failure. The center provides care for patients with lung disease and supports clinical education and research in pulmonary medicine.

In 2012, he became editor-in-chief of the Proceedings of the American Thoracic Society. He oversaw the journal's transition to the Annals of the American Thoracic Society, serving as its founding editor-in-chief until 2017.

In 2017, Hansen-Flaschen founded the Jay and Randy Fishman Program for Home Assisted Ventilation at Penn Medicine.

Awards and honors Hansen-Flaschen received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the American Thoracic Society in 2019. He also received the Inaugural Clinical Educator Award from the American Thoracic Society Clinical Problems Assembly in 2004, the Praxis Award in Professional Ethics from Villanova University in 2008, and the Leonard P. Lang Award from the American Lung Association of Delaware in 2017.

He also received the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award, the Donna McCurdy Teaching Award, the Robert Dunning Dripps Teaching Award, the Leonard Tow Award for Humanism in Medicine, and the Radhika Srinivasan Award for Humanism and Professionalism at the University of Pennsylvania.

He is a fellow of the American College of Physicians, the American College of Chest Physicians, the American Thoracic Society, and the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

Selected publications