Grant From Catholic Charities Helps 9/11 First Responders Cover Health-Related Expenses

Sep 11, 2017 | Community

From left: Julia Nicolaou Burns, MPH, Administrator, Selikoff Centers for Occupational Health; Michael A. Crane, MD, MPH; Monsignor Kevin Sullivan, PhD, Executive Director, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York; and Beatriz Diaz Taveras, Executive Director, Catholic Charities Community Services.

A newly awarded $1.3 million grant from Catholic Charities is helping the Mount Sinai Health System address the unmet medical needs of 9/11 first responders who may be uninsured or facing extreme financial hardship. Many of these workers, who assisted in the cleanup efforts at Ground Zero during the World Trade Center disaster, wore little or no protective gear and received minimal supervision while directly handling materials that contained asbestos and other toxins.

The Catholic Charities grant will help these men and women pay for counseling, transportation to and from medical appointments, and other uncovered health-related expenses.

“Many responders today are unable to work in environments that further expose them to chemicals, dusts, or toxins, or heavy physical labor,” limitations that make it difficult to find or maintain employment, says Michael A. Crane, MD, MPH, Director of the World Trade Center Health Program Clinical Center of Excellence (CCE) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Medical Director of the Selikoff Centers for Occupational Health. He says the situation at Ground Zero became so toxic that “airborne concentrations of dust overwhelmed the upper airways of the responders, and particles that might otherwise have been filtered out directly entered the workers’ tracheae, bronchi, and lungs.”

Says Philip J. Landrigan, MD, MSc, Dean for Global Health and Professor of Environmental Medicine, Public Health, and Pediatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai: “We are delighted that with the support of this grant from Catholic Charities we will be able to provide these workers with the care they so richly deserve and earned through their selfless sacrifice.”

Recently, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health renewed two contracts at the Icahn School of Medicine that will continue to fund the World Trade Center (WTC) Health Program CCE and the WTC General Responder Data Center for another five years.

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A Rooftop Garden Blooms Each Summer

Sep 11, 2017 | Community

Pictured above, Dr. Brodman, left, with “gardener-in-chief” Dr. Ascher-Walsh. 

The rooftop of Klingenstein Pavilion is a bright and bounteous place, thanks to a team effort led by Michael Brodman, MD, Ellen and Howard C. Katz Chair and Professor, Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science; and Charles J. Ascher-Walsh, MD, Associate Professor, Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science. “Dr. Brodman built the original planters about six years ago,” Dr. Ascher-Walsh says. “We expand every year, and it just takes off when the summer comes.” Their garden grows (in alphabetical order) arugula, basil, chard, dahlias, eggplant, figs, gladiolus, kale, leeks, mint, onions, peppers, radishes, sunflowers, thyme, and zucchini. The faculty, fellows, and staff take the produce home, have it for lunch and communal dinners, and place cut flowers around the offices. They also brighten their workdays by holding meetings on the rooftop deck. Dr. Brodman adds, with tongue in cheek, “Let everyone know we also rent it out for weddings and Bar Mitzvahs!”

 

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Mount Sinai Celebrates Pride

Sep 11, 2017 | Community

Pride march participants Lewis Paulino, medical student, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Nicole Z. Mack, Administrative Secretary, Mount Sinai Printing Services.

Roughly 40,000 people covered the two-mile parade route down Fifth Avenue to Christopher Street during the 48th Annual New York City Pride March on Sunday, June 25. Among the marchers, the rainbow-colored flags, and festive floats were more than 80 Mount Sinai Health System employees—many of whom wore T-shirts that read, “We Take Pride in Your Health.”

At a PrideFest street fair held concurrently in Greenwich Village, members of Mount Sinai’s LGBT Health Services, Office of Diversity and Inclusion, and Institute for Advanced Medicine also staffed information booths and distributed free condoms, pamphlets, and Mount Sinai-branded favors. In addition to celebrating inclusivity, “Mount Sinai is ensuring that employees feel comfortable and safe to be themselves at work and outside of work,” says Richard Cancio, MPH, Program Manager of LGBT Health, Mount Sinai Health System.

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Sharing the Love of Jazz

Sep 11, 2017 | Community

Pictured above, Brent Birckhead, alto saxophone; Maya Kronfeld, piano; Barry Stephenson, bass; and Savannah Harris, drums, performing jazz favorites in the Mount Sinai Downtown-Union Square atrium.

Musicians with Lincoln Center’s Jazz for Young People program treated patients, staff, and visitors at Mount Sinai Downtown-Union Square, The Mount Sinai Hospital, and Mount Sinai West to free performances in June that celebrated the music of Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and other jazz greats. At each Mount Sinai location, people enjoyed listening to popular favorites, such as “When the Saints Go Marching In” and “Take the A Train.” Lincoln Center offers educational programming for children and adults that fosters an appreciation of jazz as an enjoyable and uniquely American art form. The Jazz for Young People program—based on the idea that jazz embraces personal freedom and humanity and serves as a metaphor for democracy—typically brings jazz artists and performances to New York City schools.

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Healthy Dialogues at the 2017 Aspen Ideas Festival

Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community, Featured

Kenneth L. Davis, MD, right, in blue, leads a luncheon roundtable discussion on the future of medicine and medical care.

Clear blue skies and fresh mountain air set the stage for the 2017 Aspen Ideas Festival, which ran from Thursday, June 22, through Saturday, July 1. Presented by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic magazine, the annual festival in Aspen, Colorado, is a gathering place where thought leaders across many disciplines engage in a robust exchange of ideas.

Experts from the Mount Sinai Health System participated in discussions that offered the latest information on the future of medicine, the power of good health, today’s opioid epidemic, ways to grow a global health workforce, the intersection between climate change and health, and the aging brain. These discussions drew more than one million social media impressions. As in years past, Mount Sinai provided attendees with complimentary health screenings in its Health Concourse. Dermatologists from Mount Sinai’s Kimberly and Eric J. Waldman Department of Dermatology performed 748 free skin cancer screenings and identified 35 possible melanomas, 13 basal cell carcinomas, and 2 squamous cell carcinomas. Nurses from Mount Sinai Heart performed 571 complimentary blood pressure and cholesterol screenings.

Mount Sinai offers free health screenings to Festival participants.

At this year’s festival, Kenneth L. Davis, MD, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Mount Sinai Health System, addressed the future of medicine and provided a glimpse into next-generation health care. “Automated diagnostics are going to change medicine over the next 25 years in ways we can’t even conceptualize,” said Dr. Davis. He discussed a scenario where mobile phone apps would be used to collect personalized health data that is sent to the patient’s electronic health records. Using smart technology, this information would then generate a diagnosis and outline a treatment for the patient.

In a talk called “The Power of Good Health,” Mount Sinai experts discussed how nutrition, sleep, and the environment affect wellbeing. Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, Director of Mount Sinai Heart and Physician-in-Chief of The Mount Sinai Hospital, said the risk factors that contribute to heart disease— high cholesterol, poor eating habits, lack of exercise, obesity, high blood pressure, smoking, and diabetes—can all be prevented or reduced with lifestyle or behavior modification. Yasmin Hurd, PhD, Director of the Addiction Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Professor of Psychiatry, Neuroscience, and Pharmacological Sciences, addressed the opioid epidemic. She explained that addiction can occur quickly because opioids “get into the brain very quickly.” Some people are so susceptible that three days of exposure is all they need to become hooked. “Genetics play an important role,” Dr. Hurd said, but more information is needed to fully understand the mechanisms behind addiction. Now that greater attention is being paid to this illness, she added, large-scale studies are under way that “will be able to give us better information about who is at risk.

 

Mount Sinai luminaries participate in a talk about The Power of Good Health.

From left, Kenneth L. Davis, MD; Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD; David M. Rapoport, MD; and Philip J. Landrigan, MD, MSc.

Yasmin Hurd, PhD, discusses the science of addiction.

Yasmin Hurd, PhD, pictured second from left, in the panel, Deep Dive: The Opioid Tsunami.

Prabhjot Singh, MD, PhD, addresses the worldwide shortage of health professionals.

Prabhjot Singh, MD, PhD, left, in the panel, “Deep Dive: Growing a Global Health Workforce.”

Philip J. Landrigan, MD, MSc, Dean for Global Health, and Professor of Environmental Medicine, Public Health, and Pediatrics, told attendees that “clean air and safe drinking water are critical for children’s health,” along with the elimination of environmental hazards http://www.mountsinai.org/profiles/philip-j-landrigansuch as lead and pesticides. He said eating organic food can lower someone’s risk of ingesting pesticides by 90 percent. David M. Rapoport, MD, Director of the Sleep Medicine Research Program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said, “The average amount of sleep needed is seven to eight hours per night, but that varies a great deal.” The best way to tell if someone is getting enough sleep is to see if he or she feels rested in the morning.

Robert Wright, MD, MPH

According to Robert Wright, MD, MPH, Chair of Environmental Medicine and Public Health, and Professor of Pediatrics, the Earth’s changing climate—with more extreme droughts, flooding, rising temperatures, and air pollution—will lead to increased infections, heat stress, heart attacks, and other impacts on human health, with the most severe consequences affecting the elderly and the very young. “There is a lot about climate and health we don’t know,” Dr. Wright said. “We need better surveillance and satellite systems, and we need to start tracking the impact on health in order to make better predictions, and thereby, employ our resources more wisely, as these effects now seem inevitable.”

Samuel Gandy, MD, PhD

Prabhjot Singh, MD, PhD, Director of The Arnhold Institute for Global Health and Chair of the Department of Health System Design and Global Health, discussed how Mount Sinai is deploying machine learning and technology in its Atlas project, which combines data from satellite images with field-based insights to address health inequities in undercounted and underserved communities. The Atlas platform, being used in Guatemala and Harlem, is the “start of a journey,” he said. “It will allow us to push actionable, real-time insights to frontline workers who build trust within communities and optimize health system effectiveness.”

Samuel Gandy, MD, PhD, Director of the Center for Cognitive Health and Professor of Neurology, and Psychology, told attendees that Alzheimer’s disease research now includes the development of medication that can prevent inflammation in the brain, as well as the tangles that occur within dying nerve cells. “We are working on a cocktail of drugs and vaccines, some that prevent inflammation, some that reduce tangle formation, and some that, hopefully, arrest both inflammation and the tangle formation,” he said.

Make Way for the Mount Sinai Mighty Milers!

Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community, Pediatrics

A club sponsored by the Parenting Center at Kravis Children’s Hospital at Mount Sinai has inspired a love for running in about 70 patients ages 5 to 12. From April to June, the Mount Sinai Mighty Milers met on Wednesdays in Central Park to chat, stretch, and run on the half-mile East Meadow loop. Along the way, they were chaperoned by 20 volunteers, including medical students, residents, attendings, nurses, social workers, and support staff.

“Wednesday afternoon quickly became the highlight of the week for everyone involved,” says Keith J. Benkov, MD, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, and Gastroenterology, who was an organizer, along with Abby T. Klock, MS, Child Life Specialist; Katie Connolly, Program Coordinator, and Mariel Benjamin, LCSW, both of the Parenting Center; and Michael N. Yaker, MD, Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, and founding partner of Westside Pediatrics. The program will return in October. For more information, contact sinaimightymilers@mssm.edu.

Pictured above, Delilah Rodriguez (with a purple friend) and Ezra Rzetelny; George Hendy getting a high five from Michael N. Yaker, MD; and runners at the starting line.

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