Nina A. Bickell, MD, MPH
Associate Director, Community Engaged and Equity Research, The Tisch Cancer Institute
Co-Director, Center for Health Equity and Community Engaged Research
Co-Director, Cancer Prevention and Control, The Tisch Cancer Institute
Professor, Department of Population Health Science and Policy
Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
“It was instilled in me from my parents, from my elementary and high school—social justice was always a very important component,” says Nina A. Bickell, MD, MPH, one of nine accomplished physicians and researchers who received the 2019 Jacobi Medallion—one of Mount Sinai’s highest awards. “So the importance of everyone having access to very basic rights and needs was just a given.”
“What I really wanted to understand was if people were treated differently, why, what difference did it make, and what could we do to get rid of the kinds of differences that really hurt people,” Dr. Bickell says.
At Mount Sinai since 1995, Dr. Bickell has been working with the Harlem community and safety net hospitals throughout the New York City metropolitan area to reduce disparities in cancer care. Her work assessing the role of race, obesity, insulin resistance, and aggressive breast cancer have expanded collaborations nationally.
“I started working to look at what is the racial difference in insulin resistance, and could that explain the more aggressive kinds of breast cancer that black women get,” she says. “What are some of the epigenetic influences contributing to the racial disparities that we’re seeing that ultimately may lead to different kinds of drug targets.”
Dr. Bickell has extensive experience in large-scale, multi-center trials with regional, national, and international collaborations designed to understand causes of racial disparities, promote health equity, and improve the quality of cancer care. Clinically, Dr. Bickell sees patients at Mount Sinai’s Internal Medicine Associates as a primary care physician serving East and Central Harlem.
“Mount Sinai was created as a hospital to provide care for those who could not get care in other places,” she says. “There are things that we can do in how we deliver care to at least even the playing field a bit. Mount Sinai has enabled me to–and taught me that I can–do it, and how to do it.”
“Even if you have the best diagnostic tools and the best chemotherapy, there are people who aren’t getting them,” says Carol Horowitz, MD, Dean for Gender Equity in Science and Medicine and Professor, Department of Population Health Science and Policy, and Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “Someone needs to shine a light on vulnerable populations and say why is this happening, this isn’t fair, we can do better. And Nina shows us how to do better. She is a role model for how you can be successful in thinking critically, doing excellent work, and using it to change things that you’re passionate about.”
