Updated on Sep 27, 2024 | Community, Featured
Seated from left: Samuel Márquez, PhD, FAAA; Sally Claridge, PhD, ISMMS ’24; Craig L. Katz, MD, MSH ’96; Roopa Kohli-Seth, MD, FCCP, FACP, MSH ’00; Scott Gottlieb, MD, MSSM ’99, MSH ’02; George B. Wanna, MD, MHCM, FACS, MSH ’08; Ebby Elahi, MD, FACS, MSSM ’96, MSH ’00; Talia H. Swartz, MD, PhD, MSSM ’06 ’08, MSH ’10, ’13; Standing from left: Larry Attia, MD, SLR ’93 ’95; Timothy Friedmann, MD, MSH ’23 ’24; Kurian Thomas, MD, SLR ’94; Brendan G. Carr, MD, MA, MS, Chief Executive Officer of the Mount Sinai Health System; Dennis Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; Mark A. Rubin, MD, MSSM ’88, MSH ’89; Rory M.C. Abrams, MD, MSH ’19 ’20; Alexis Colvin, MD, MSSM ’02; Mary O’Sullivan, MD, SLR ’78; Not pictured: Laura P. Gelfman, MD, MPH, MSSM ‘07 ‘14, MSH ’11; Bachir Taouli, MD, MHA.
The Mount Sinai Alumni Awards Ceremony recently celebrated Mount Sinai and St. Luke’s-Roosevelt alumni and students who have made extraordinary contributions to the medical field and to the Mount Sinai community. Fourteen alumni received Alumni Awards.
The event was held Tuesday, September 17, at the New York Academy of Medicine. About 200 faculty, staff, and honored guests in attendance. Click here to read the program and click here to see more photos.
The Alumni Award Recipients are:
The Mount Sinai Alumni Leadership Award: Sally Claridge, PhD, ISMMS ’24
Sally Claridge, PhD, received her PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Integrating her laboratory and computational experience, her research focused on developing a functional genomics pipeline for precision oncology in the lab of Benjamin D. Hopkins, PhD.
The Mount Sinai Alumni Leadership Award: Timothy Friedmann, MD, MSH ’23 ‘24
Timothy Friedmann, MD, is a Clinical Instructor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Icahn Mount Sinai. He is also an Assistant Program Director for the residency program in Emergency Medicine, Mount Sinai Health System.
St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Distinguished Young Physician of the Year: Rory M.C. Abrams, MD, MSH ’19 ’20
Rory M. C. Abrams, MD, MSH ’19 ’20, is Assistant Professor of Neurology, Mount Sinai Health System, and an attending physician in the Department of Neurology at Mount Sinai West, Mount Sinai Morningside, and The Mount Sinai Hospital.
The Jeffrey T. Laitman, PhD Award for Achievement in Medical Education: Samuel Márquez, PhD, FAAA
Samuel Márquez, PhD, FAAA, is the Co-Discipline Director of Anatomy in the College of Medicine, Director of Gross Anatomy for the School of Health Professions, and Professor in the departments of Cell Biology and Otolaryngology at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University.
The Mount Sinai Graduate School Alumni Award: Laura P. Gelfman, MD, MPH, MSSM ‘07 ‘14, MSH ‘11
Laura P. Gelfman, MD, MPH, is Vice Chair, Quality and Clinical Innovation, for the Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, Mount Sinai Heath System, and Professor in the Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at Icahn Mount Sinai.
The Mount Sinai Master Clinician Award: George B. Wanna, MD, MHCM, FACS, MSH ’08
George B. Wanna, MD, MHCM, FACS, holds dual professorships in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and Neurosurgery at Icahn Mount Sinai. He is also Executive Vice Chair of the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, the Chief of the Division of Otology-Neuro-Otology and Skull Base Surgery, and the Chair of the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai.
The Mount Sinai Alumni Special Recognition Award: Scott Gottlieb, MD, MSSM ’99, MSH ’02
Scott Gottlieb, MD, is a physician and served as the 23rd Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and a partner at the venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates.
The Mount Sinai Alumni Special Recognition Award: Roopa Kohli-Seth, MD, FCCP, FACP, MSH ’00
Roopa Kohli-Seth, MD, FCCP, FACP, is Director of the Institute for Critical Care Medicine, Mount Sinai Health System, and a Professor in the Department of Surgery at Icahn Mount Sinai.
The Terry Ann Krulwich Physician-Scientist Alumni Award: Talia H. Swartz, MD, PhD, MSSM ’06 ’08, MSH ’10, ’13
Talia H. Swartz, MD, PhD, is Senior Associate Dean for MD-PhD Education, Director of the Medical Scientist Training Program, and Director of Graduate Research and Education at The Center for Antiracism in Practice at Icahn Mount Sinai.
The Dr. Sidney Grossman Distinguished Humanitarian Award: Craig L. Katz, MD, MSH ’96
Craig L. Katz, MD, is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Medical Education, and System Design and Global Health at Icahn Mount Sinai. He is the founding director of the Mount Sinai Program in Global Mental Health.
The J. Lester Gabrilove Award: Bachir Taouli, MD, MHA
Bachir Taouli, MD, MHA, is a Professor of Radiology in the Abdominal Imaging/Body MRI Section of the Department of Diagnostic, Molecular and Interventional Radiology, in addition to the BioMedical Engineering and Imaging Institute at Icahn Mount Sinai.
St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Distinguished Alumni Award: Mary O’Sullivan, MD, SLR ’78
For more than three decades, Mary O’Sullivan, MD, served as Director of the Chest Clinic, the largest medical subspecialty clinic at Mount Sinai Morningside.
St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Distinguished Alumni Award: Kurian Thomas, MD, SLR ’94
Kurian Thomas, MD, is Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Icahn Mount Sinai and has been at the heart of the Division of Anesthesia at Mount Sinai Morningside (formerly St. Luke’s Hospital) for more than 30 years.
The Saul Horowitz, Jr. Memorial Award: Mark A. Rubin, MD, MSSM ’88, MSH ’89
Mark A. Rubin, MD, is Founding Director of the Bern Center for Precision Medicine and Director of the Department for BioMedical Research at the University of Bern in Switzerland.
Updated on Sep 18, 2024 | Community, Featured
Vivian Leonard, RPh, Director of Pharmacy for Mount Sinai Queens, stands beside a drug collection kiosk.
Have you ever noticed old bottles of prescription medications in your medicine cabinet and wondered how you can properly dispose of them?
Experts say you shouldn’t flush unwanted pharmaceuticals down the toilet or throw them in the trash. Studies over the last decade reveal potential environmental and public health hazards associated with this practice.
To provide the community with a safer, more sustainable method of discarding over-the-counter and prescription drugs, Mount Sinai offers free, 24/7 drug collection kiosks at three Mount Sinai locations: The Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai Queens, and Mount Sinai South Nassau. The service is the result of a collaboration with an organization called MED-Project, which offers a drug take back program. Med-Project is a nonprofit formed by the pharmaceutical industry.
Gina Caliendo, PharmD, BCPS,
“This program gets unwanted drugs out of homes and into a secure location, so that they don’t end up with children and teens, or pets, or on the street for illicit use,” says Gina Caliendo, PharmD, BCPS, Senior Director of Pharmacy at The Mount Sinai Hospital. “It is an effort to get drugs out of circulation as much as possible.” The service is available at no charge for employees and members of the public.
Mount Sinai is able to send all medications deposited in kiosks directly back to a waste management company that incinerates the boxes and their contents. The program is one of many prevention, treatment, and recovery efforts funded by the settlements reached with drug manufacturers for their role in the opioid crisis.
This effort is one of many collaborative interventions between environmental and health care scientists to establish more sustainable practices at all stages of the pharmaceutical lifecycle.
“It’s a public safety measure,” says Dr. Caliendo. “We are inviting the community to do this as an effort to protect children and the environment, and to decrease access to drugs on the street.”
Keeping unused medications around the house or disposing of them through less secure means can be hazardous, especially for children and adolescents. According to a study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, teenagers often obtain drugs via leftover prescriptions they find at home. If not disposed of safely, opioids, stimulants, and other drugs with potential recreational uses may also be diverted into illegal markets, contributing to harmful cycles of drug misuse, addiction, and even overdose.
Also, virtually all medications can pose a threat if consumed by the wrong person, at the incorrect dosage, or past its expiration date.
While flushing drugs down the toilet may seem like a safe alternative, this can contaminate the water and expose others to potentially harmful chemicals.
“While water purification eliminates a lot of things, it does not necessarily eliminate all of these soluble chemicals,” says Dr. Caliendo.
In addition, research shows that pharmaceuticals released to the environment through flushing or other means can hurt the environment, including fish and other animal populations. Consuming active pharmaceutical ingredients can harm a diverse range of wildlife, leading to death or interfering with their ability to reproduce.
Pharmaceuticals discarded in the environment can also increasingly contribute to the problem of antimicrobial resistance—in both animal and human populations—which occurs when germs develop the ability to defeat the drugs designed to kill them.
Since opening its first kiosk in 2022, Mount Sinai has collected more than 700 pounds of discarded medication, making it a leader of this effort among New York City hospitals, according to Dr. Caliendo.
If Mount Sinai’s three collection kiosk locations are not convenient for you, you can find additional kiosks near you by searching the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Drug Drop Sites map, or find a collector authorized by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in your community.
In addition to permanent collection sites at participating pharmacies and hospitals, you can also find community take-back sites sponsored by the DEA during the twice-annual National Prescription Drug Take Back Day, which are held in April and October.
If you are unable to bring your unwanted or expired medications to a free disposal site or event, you can request mail-in packages from the New York State Department of Health.
Updated on Sep 12, 2024 | Community, Featured
Members of Lifeline musical’s health care professionals chorus stand behind the hospital bed of an actor whose character is dying of an antibiotic-resistant post-op infection. Brandon Oby, an MD student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, is second from left. Photo credit: Bob Farese
An inspiring Off-Broadway musical, Lifeline, tells the story of Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming’s world-changing discovery of penicillin in 1928, charting the rise and fall of antibiotics. Interwoven with a modern storyline of a doctor trying to save her childhood sweetheart under the current, looming threat of antibiotic resistance, the musical features local scientists and health care professionals, including members of the Mount Sinai community, alongside the show’s touring professional company.
Cameron R. Hernandez, MD, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director at Mount Sinai Queens, will be featured in the chorus on Tuesday, September 10, through Sunday, September 15. Mount Sinai’s Eva Chebishev, a PhD student, and Brandon Oby, an MD student, performed during the opening week of the musical, which debuted Wednesday, August 28.
“Lifeline tells the astounding story of one of my heroes, Dr. Alexander Fleming, and I could not be more excited to be a part of an ensemble cast to tell the important story of the development of antibiotics,” says Dr. Hernandez. “It is a very special experience to represent Mount Sinai and to be featured alongside local scientists and health care professionals who work every day to keep our communities safe and healthy. I hope to see you in the audience.”
Cameron R. Hernandez, MD, far left, poses for a group photo backstage with cast members from the Lifeline musical
The musical is more than a historical narrative about the discovery of penicillin. It’s an engaging form of science communication that promotes awareness and advocacy for the rising global threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) by telling the stories of those affected by antimicrobial resistance every day: patients and their loved ones, health care practitioners, and advocates fighting for policy change. Each character is based on a real person who has had experiences with AMR.
“Being involved in Lifeline has been a quite literal dream come true,” says Ms. Chebishev. “I had thought my vision of incorporating my lifelong passion for musical theatre into a career in effective science communication was too niche to be possible, so it was incredibly validating to learn there are already some people doing it (and doing it well) in such an effective, powerful way.”
Mr. Oby is a second-year medical student who spends his free time combining his love for music and medicine—playing for patients at hospitals, performing in jazz combos at medical conferences, and playing in bands at medical fundraising galas. He says joining the cast of Lifeline felt like a natural next step.
“I had never done musical theater before this, so I was incredibly excited for the new experience. Bridging my two worlds of music and medicine makes both so much more special. Lifeline is a one-of-a-kind show, and I hope you all get to experience this incredible feat of science communication,” he says.
Eva Chebishev, PhD student, second row, far right, and Mr. Oby, back row, far right, pose backstage for a group photo with Lifeline’s health care professionals chorus.
The musical is a two-time Edinburgh Festival Fringe sell-out and has toured to London, Glasgow, and the U.S. East Coast in 2022. It also was performed at the U.K. Houses of Parliament and in Barbados for Prime Minister Mia Mottley before it made its debut Off-Broadway in August.
“It is an honor to be part of this endeavor and to represent Mount Sinai alongside other scientists and health care professionals passionate about AMR and accessible, effective science communication,” adds Ms. Chebishev. “Lifeline is real, it’s raw, it’s powerful, and I hope you go see it.”
Lifeline is being staged at The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre at The Pershing Square Signature Center at 480 W. 42nd Street, Jim Houghton Way until Saturday, September 28. To learn more about Lifeline or to purchase tickets, please visit their website.
