Angela Diaz, MD, PhD, MPH, center, with honorees Lenore Katz-Cohen, OD, optical care sponsor and provider, and Robert Cohen, OD, Chief Executive Officer of Cohen’s Fashion Optical, who together with the Cohen family established optical care at the Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center.

The Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center marked its 50th anniversary by honoring five individuals and the Mount Sinai Auxiliary Board at its 15th Annual Breakfast of Legends benefit at the Ziegfeld Ballroom on Tuesday, October 30. The Center provides free, comprehensive, confidential health and wellness services to nearly 12,000 young people each year and has become a national leader in adolescent health research, training, and care.

Peter W. May, Chairman, Boards of Trustees, Mount Sinai Health System, welcomed the 500 guests, noting that he had attended every breakfast for the last 15 years. “The Center is one of the shining stars in the Mount Sinai galaxy,” he said. Mr. May also received the Dr. Joan E. Morgenthau Lifetime Advocate for Youth Award.

Honoree Peter W. May

Angela Diaz, MD, PhD, MPH, Jean C. and James W. Crystal Professor in Adolescent Health, and Director of the Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center, acknowledge benefactors, leaders, and staff who have contributed to the Center’s success. “One tree doesn’t make a forest, and one string doesn’t make music,” she said. “All of you make the forest and make the orchestra.” Dr. Diaz also recognized Henry S. Berman, MD, who was one of the original physicians on staff at the Center and worked with Dr. Morgenthau, the Center’s founder; and Jay Roberts, the Center’s first administrator.

“When I stop to think how many young people have been served at the Center, I have to pause—the number is huge, in the hundreds of thousands—and if I then think of the ripple effect on the families and friends of those patients, the number swells exponentially,” said Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and President for Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Health System. “How many of us can say we have transformed the lives of so many?”

The honorees also included Gary C. Butts, MD, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer for the Mount Sinai Health System, and Dean for Diversity Programs, Policy, and Community Affairs for the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; Lenore Katz-Cohen, OD, optical care sponsor and provider, and Robert Cohen, OD, Chief Executive Officer of Cohen’s Fashion Optical, who together with the Cohen family established optical care at the Center; The Mount Sinai Auxiliary Board; and Bethany Novak, MS, RN, FNP-BC, who joined the Center as a family nurse practitioner in 1988.

Youth speaker Adam Neville

Former and current patients related how the Center had transformed their lives. Adam Neville, a young patient, said that his mother was a patient at the Center when she was a teenager, and that he is named after the counselor she saw. He spoke of his emotional struggles and the support he receives at the Center, saying, “I owe my life as I know it to the Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center.”

A poignant personal history was given by Hector Vazquez, MD, MS, now a pediatric emergency medicine specialist at Maimonides Medical Center, who, as a 14-year-old growing up in East Harlem, walked three life-changing blocks to the Adolescent Health Center. “Living in East Harlem, I was earmarked for failure. But, the Center’s providers educated me on safer sex practices, the effects of drugs, and making good life decisions, and they challenged my mind on what my life goals were.”

At the time, the staff did not realize they were shaping a future physician. When Hector was a medical student—at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai—he did a one-month rotation at the Center.

“It was then I learned just how revolutionary this Center was. I saw how it touched the lives of many, and it inspired me to do the same.”

Honoree Gary C. Butts, MD, left, and speaker Hector Vazquez, MD, MS