Updated on Jul 15, 2025 | Community, Featured
From left: Gary C. Butts, MD; Robert A. Levinson, husband of the late Patricia S. Levinson; and Kenneth L. Davis, MD
More than 100 friends and members of the Mount Sinai Health System paid tribute to the late Patricia S. Levinson at a ceremony in November, when Mount Sinai’s Center for Multicultural and Community Affairs (CMCA) was renamed in her honor.
Mrs. Levinson, a Mount Sinai Trustee for 34 years, “was CMCA’s most passionate advocate,” said Kenneth L. Davis, MD, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Mount Sinai Health System, who spoke at the event. “Her advice, counsel, and generosity were legendary, and she was a tremendous ally and resource for the Health System.”
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community, Featured, Research
Prabhjot Singh, MD, PhD, Director of The Arnhold Institute for Global Health, right, with, from left: Hilda Mejias, a Health Coach in Harlem, and Anna Stapleton, Program Manager for Policy at The Arnhold Institute for Global Health.
The United States spends more money on health care than any other country, yet has poorer outcomes with shorter average life expectancies (78.8 years, per capita) than peer nations, such as Japan and Spain, with 83.4 years and 83.2 years, respectively. Furthermore, a child born in poverty in Detroit has a life expectancy that is six years shorter than a child born in similar circumstances in New York City. And someone born on the Upper East Side of Manhattan has a life expectancy that is nine years longer than a person born ten blocks away in East Harlem.
Mending this uneven patchwork of U.S. health outcomes will require a new model of care that embraces the use of community health workers (CHWs), non-clinical workers who provide underserved patients with the continuum of care they need, according to a new report from The Arnhold Institute for Global Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Office of the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Health in Agenda 2030 and for Malaria. The report recommends creating a pilot program in Newark, New Jersey, a city with many non-English speaking residents that lags behind the rest of the state in health outcomes.
CHWs come from the same communities as their patients and serve as the primary mechanism that enables patients to live healthier lives. They can serve as educators, for example, explaining the relationship between diabetes, blood sugar, high-sugar foods, and insulin in a way patients understand, or link patients to neighborhood exercise groups or food pantries that provide health-conscious meals. Such programs have been successful in South America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia.
“A growing body of evidence tells us that social, economic, genomic, and cultural factors can impact an individual’s ability to build and maintain health, and community health workers have the ability to help bridge that gap between medical advice and a patient’s ability to comply,” says Prabhjot Singh, MD, PhD, Director of The Arnhold Institute for Global Health, and the report’s senior author. Dr. Singh co-founded the One Million Community Health Worker Campaign with Jeffrey Sachs, an author and well-regarded sustainable development leader, whom The Arnhold Institute for Global Health is hosting as a visiting fellow through 2018.
Claire Qureshi, MBA, Vice President of Frontline Delivery, Office of the UN Special Envoy for Health in Agenda 2030 and for Malaria, co-wrote the report with Dr. Singh. “We’ve seen the health impact and economic value of CHWs in countries around the world and fundamentally believe that working with them as part of integrated primary care is a better way to practice medicine,” says Ms. Qureshi. “With careful construction of the right care models, including the organizational and financial infrastructure needed to support them, CHWs can contribute enormously to patients, communities, and health systems alike.”
While CHWs have existed in the United States for decades, they have struggled to gain widespread acceptance. The services they provide have not been reimbursed by public or private health insurance plans, which are based on traditional fee-for-service payments made to hospitals and clinics. In this old model of health care, there has been little incentive to pay for the preventive and maintenance support provided by CHWs, and little consideration given to the support patients need to comply with the medical advice they receive.
But that is changing. The country’s new emphasis on keeping populations healthy and out of the hospital is creating fertile ground for robust, sustainable CHW programs to emerge, according to the report.
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community
Families with young children in Williamsburg and Inwood braved the frigid weather in December to take part in two Winter Wonderland events that were hosted by Mount Sinai Doctors practices in each neighborhood. Staff festively decorated the facilities with streamers and cardboard cutouts of characters from the Disney film Frozen. Children created their own ice cream ornaments, built 3D igloos, made snowman picture frames, took photos with the cardboard cutouts, and played in makeshift igloos while listening to songs from the hit movie.
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community
Jon Batiste entertained patients and staff on the grand piano and melodica.
Jon Batiste, the renowned jazz pianist, leader of the group Stay Human, and bandleader for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, recently performed at the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine’s holiday concert. In the Mount Sinai Downtown-Union Square atrium, Mr. Batiste took to the grand piano, serenading an audience of patients and staff with holiday favorites. Mr. Batiste also played the melodica in accompanying Singing Together Measure by Measure, a choir of recovering stroke patients and caregivers. Actively involved with the Center, Mr. Batiste received the What a Wonderful World Award in 2014 and serves on the Center’s Steering Committee.
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community
Susan Mirsky, center, with daughter Jennifer Mirsky, left, and Selassie Ogyaadu, MD, MPH, Clinical Research Coordinator, provided diabetes information at the health fair.
The Mount Sinai Hospital recently celebrated World Diabetes Day with a health fair in the Guggenheim Pavilion. A multidisciplinary team led by Camilla Levister, MS, ANP-C, CDE, from the Mount Sinai Diabetes Center, provided body-fat testing, type 2 diabetes risk assessment, and nutritional counseling. Several organizations were also on hand to promote healthy living, including the American Diabetes Association and the 92nd Street Y, which offered an exercise class for all fitness levels. Year-round, the Center’s Stanley Mirsky, MD Diabetes Education Unit offers free diabetes education classes in Spanish and English and social support for those at risk for the disease, or living with it. “Every year, my family and I are thrilled to volunteer at World Diabetes Day and get the word out about the Unit,” said Susan Mirsky, honorary Chair of the Unit, which is named for her late husband, a renowned Mount Sinai endocrinologist. “Diabetes is a uniquely self-controlled disease. We provide knowledge so that the patient—not diabetes—is in control.”
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community
Patients Kayla Bonilla and Michael Maxwell clowned around with Cirque du Soleil performers at the Child Life Zone.
Performers from Cirque du Soleil’s Kurios: Cabinet of Curiosities brought their imaginative art form to life during a recent visit to the Child Life Zone at Kravis Children’s Hospital at Mount Sinai. Pediatric patients and their families enjoyed a short performance that brought smiles to their faces. Recorded in the KidZone TV studio within the Child Life Zone, the performance was broadcast live throughout the hospital for those who were unable to attend in person.
“The artists of the Cirque du Soleil truly lifted the spirits of our hospitalized children and families during their dynamic visit,” says Diane Rode, Director, Child Life and Creative Arts Therapy Department, Kravis Children’s Hospital.
A short time later, festivities continued when the Mount Sinai Children’s Center Foundation hosted its 30th annual benefit at Randall’s Island Park. Supporters saw a full performance of Cirque du Soleil’s Kurios: Cabinet of Curiosities and recorded hopeful, positive messages that were broadcast to hospitalized patients and their families via the KidZone TV studio.
A major fundraising event for the Department of Pediatrics, the benefit supports Child Life and Creative Arts Therapy programming for the most seriously ill pediatric patients. The benefit was chaired by Jennifer Deppe Parker, Stan Parker, Frederique Svider, and Raymond Svider, and honored Alfin G. Vicencio, MD, Chief of the Division of Pediatric Pulmonology in the Jack and Lucy Clark Department of Pediatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
