Sep 11, 2018 | Community
Left, Michele Steinberg, Food Services marketing intern and event organizer, and Valerie Shirley, Regional Marketing and Retail Director for the food vendor Morrison Healthcare.
The Plaza Café at The Mount Sinai Hospital was transformed into a colorful luau on Tuesday, July 24, courtesy of Food Services.
As Hawaiian music played, employees snapped pictures at a photo booth and dined on chicken and shrimp kabobs, coconut chicken, chocolate lava cake, cinnamon doughnuts decorated with paper pineapple leaves, and an assortment of tropical smoothies.
Sep 11, 2018 | Community
Star makers included Mount Sinai staff, from left: Igvany Moncion, Jasmin Vazquez, Gabriella Villacis, and Nimota Subair
For three days in August, faculty and staff at the Selikoff Centers for Occupational Health invited patients and visitors to create stars of hope—wooden stars with messages of support and encouragement—to adorn their walls and li the spirits of the people who are treated there.
Located in The Mount Sinai Hospital, the Selikoff Centers focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of occupational diseases and is home to Mount Sinai’s World Trade Center Health Program Clinical Center of Excellence, which cares for more than 22,000 people who were part of the clean-up effort at Ground Zero after the attacks on 9/11. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, responders were exposed to harmful toxins that have resulted in significant health consequences.
The Selikoff Centers’ project was a joint effort with the New York Says Thank You Foundation, which created the “Stars of Hope®” program to empower and inspire people and communities throughout the world that have been impacted by violence and natural disasters.
During the week of 9/11, the stars that were created in August will be displayed on a Tree of Hope located in the Annenberg lobby.
Sep 11, 2018 | Community
Dozens of Mount Sinai Health System employees, patients, and volunteers participated in the fourth annual Disability Pride Parade NYC on Sunday, July 15.
Wearing cobalt blue and magenta capes emblazoned with the word “superhero,” the group carried a Mount Sinai Rehabilitation Center banner along the nine-block parade route, which extended from Madison Square Park to Union Square Park.
The Disability Pride Parade NYC was launched in 2015 by jazz musician Mike LeDonne in honor of his daughter, Mary, who was born with Prader-Willi syndrome, a genetic disorder that impairs development. Each year, the parade celebrates inclusivity and supports individuals with disabilities.
Sep 11, 2018 | Community
Beth Oliver, DNP
The American Heart Association (AHA) New York City recently named Beth Oliver, DNP, Senior Vice President of Cardiac Services, Mount Sinai Health System, as its new President of the Board of Directors. Ms. Oliver is the first nurse to hold the position and is the only nurse to have been a member of the organization’s Board of Directors, which she joined in 2006.
Since then, Ms. Oliver has been involved with multiple initiatives that champion heart health, including the Wall Street Run & Heart Walk. Additionally, Ms. Oliver was the first nurse in New York City to receive the Heart and Stroke Lifesaver Award from the AHA for outstanding support of the organization’s mission to build lives free of cardiovascular diseases and stroke.
“I am passionate about helping the AHA continue to raise awareness about heart health and tackle health disparities in the city,” she says.
Sep 11, 2018 | Community, Engagement, Featured
From left: moderator David Epstein, Director, Domestic Human Resources, Doctors Without Borders; with Mount Sinai’s Pamela Y. Abner, MPA, Vice President, Chief Administrative Officer, Office for Diversity and Inclusion; and Barbara Warren, PsyD, Director, LGBT Programs and Policies, who was a panelist at the event.
The Mount Sinai Health System recently hosted the National Diversity Council’s inaugural Tri-State Health Care Diversity Summit at the Corporate Services Center, which brought together nearly 100 health care administrators and diversity and inclusion professionals from across the region. The Council, a nonprofit organization that advances inclusiveness in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors, presented the Health System with a Health Care Diversity Excellence Award, recognizing Mount Sinai’s deep commitment to diversity and inclusion in the workplace and surrounding communities.
“This event provided a valuable forum for sharing and learning,” says Mary Koshy, MPA, Associate Director, Office for Diversity and Inclusion, Mount Sinai Health System. “The Council received such positive feedback that we were asked to host the event again next year.”
Showing respect and understanding for people of all backgrounds improves patient satisfaction—benefiting both patients’ well-being and a medical institution’s bottom line, panelists said. The keynote speaker, Mecca Santana, Senior Vice President of Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Engagement, Westchester Medical Center Health Network, said it was also important to consider diversity in mentoring, retention, and promotion of staff. “Diversity is being invited to the party,” she said. “Inclusion is being asked to dance.”
Sep 11, 2018 | Community, Engagement, Featured
Students in the Nanotechnology course, from left: Ava Cardillo, Diven Duran, Daniel Musheev, and Kai Kumeno.
Parissa Tabrizian, MD, Professor of Surgery, center, gave a tour of operating rooms at The Mount Sinai Hospital to participants in “Saturday at Sinai.”
More than 120 high school, college, and graduate students aspiring to a broad range of careers in health participated this summer in internships and talent pipeline programs throughout the Mount Sinai Health System. Two units of the Office for Diversity and Inclusion (ODI)—Corporate Health System Affairs and the Center for Excellence in Youth Education (CEYE)—supported initiatives to provide opportunities in medicine, science, health administration, real estate, and technology to students from underrepresented backgrounds.
“The experience that I’ve had at Mount Sinai has helped me target what type of biomedical engineer I want to become in the future,” says Awa Bagayoko, who participated in CEYE’s Nanotechnology course. “The program also reaffirmed my interest in medicine.”
Israa Maarouf was an Information Technology intern.
This year marked the be.inning of a formal partnership between Mount Sinai and the New York City Department of Education (DOE) to off er internships to high school students in the departments led by Kumar Chatani, MBA, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Mount Sinai Health System; and Kenneth Holden, Senior Vice President, Real Estate Services & Facilities. “Twenty-six interns gained hands-on experiences in information technology; planning, design, and construction; engineering; and property management,” says Shana Dacon, MPH, MBA, Assistant Director, Office for Diversity and Inclusion. “We will continue to work with the DOE to expand opportunities for students during the academic year.”
Fourteen more students—from high school to graduate school—had internships in clinical departments, patient experience, population health, and diversity management, supported by ODI in partnership with organizations including America Needs You; the All Stars Project, Inc.; the Greater New York Hospital Association; the Institute for Diversity and Health Equity; and Prep for Prep.
This year, ODI also launched Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Young Queer Urban Teens for Health (LGBT YQUTH) in Medicine—a talent pipeline program for careers in health care. In the program, ODI staff and members of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai’s Stonewall Alliance student group gave informational talks to LGBT youth organizations throughout the city. “In June, we welcomed participants from the talks to the pilot ‘Saturday at Sinai’ event,” says Richard Cancio, MPH, Program Manager for LGBT Health Services, Mount Sinai Health System. The free event included interactive activities; a tour of The Mount Sinai Hospital; and a panel of public health researchers, nursing and medical students, and graduate school alumni.
CEYE student Awa Bagayoko toured Sinai BioDesign.
CEYE’s six-week summer internship programs attracted 73 high school students from across New York City. Students participated in the Fruit Fly Genomics or Nanotechnology research courses; the Clinical Internship program; or the Lloyd Sherman Scholars program.
CEYE’s research courses met daily, with students receiving lecture-based instruction coupled with activities in the Icahn School of Medicine’s teaching laboratories, where projects included studying the behavior of fruit flies kept in isolation, and exploring silver nanoparticles and their medical implications. Clinical Internship participants were matched with faculty and staff and shadowed them in jobs throughout The Mount Sinai Hospital. In the Lloyd Sherman Scholars program, first-year participants took a Biotechnology course, and second-year scholars were placed in mentored research labs. In another two-year program, 14 interns who worked in labs during the school year returned in the summer to continue their work, assisting in areas of study including ovarian cancer survival rates and engineered cardiac tissue. All of the research interns plan to submit their summer work to the upcoming New York City Science and Engineering Fair.
“My internship showed me how hands-on science is,” says Brandon Soto, a first-year Sherman Scholar. “It also showed me that there are a lot of problems in the world that can be solved with science.”
