Dr. Victoria Werth is a Professor of Dermatology and Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Chief of the Division of Dermatology at the Philadelphia Veterans Administration Hospital. Dr. Werth earned her medical degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. She completed a residency in internal medicine at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, and dermatology residency and immunodermatology fellowship at New York University School of Medicine in New York, funded by the NIH and Dermatology Foundation. She joined the faculty at Penn in 1989 and has developed an internationally recognized program in autoimmune skin diseases.
She is a co-founder of the Rheumatologic Dermatology Society and previous president of the group. She is co-founder of the Medical Dermatology Society, and a recipient of their lifetime achievement award. She initiated the combined internal medicine/dermatology residency program in the US, which has successfully trained prominent leaders in complex medical dermatology. She has a longstanding interest in clinical and translational research pertaining to autoimmune skin diseases, including a major focus on dermatomyositis, with a focus on improving the outcomes of autoimmune dermatologic diseases. She has developed and validated the CDASI, a dermatomyositis skin severity tool now used in many international clinical trials, with a goal to advancing evidence for current and new therapeutics. Her laboratory research includes studies in dermatomyositis that relate to pathogenesis, heterogeneity of response to treatment, and ultraviolet light effects on skin. She has received numerous honors for her work, including the lifetime achievement award from the Medical Dermatology Society, the Rose Hirschler Award from the Women’s Dermatologic Society, the American Skin Association’s Research Achievement Award in Autoimmune & Inflammatory Skin Disorders, and the Lifetime Career Educator Award from the Dermatology Foundation. Her work has been funded by the Dermatology Foundation, NIH, DOD, the Veterans Administration, the Lupus Research Alliance, the Lupus Foundation of America, the Myositis Association, the International Pemphigus and Pemphigoid Foundation, CARRA, and industry.