Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community
Kenyon Farrow addressed racial justice in HIV care.
In observance of World AIDS Day, the Mount Sinai Health System held two events in recognition of the disease’s multifaceted impact and the importance of HIV research, prevention, and treatment. In a special HIV grand rounds program, the Mount Sinai Institute for Advanced Medicine hosted Kenyon Farrow, U.S. and Global Health Policy Director with the Treatment Action Group, for an in-depth discussion of racial justice in HIV prevention and treatment. Following the discussion was a performance by Barbara Walsh, Broadway veteran and Tony nominee. The Health System also hosted a free screening of Memories of a Penitent Heart, a documentary written and directed by Cecilia Aldarondo, PhD, about her uncle, Miguel Dieppa, an aspiring actor and playwright who died of AIDS in the 1980s. The film was followed by a panel discussion moderated by Terri L. Wilder, MSW, Director of HIV/AIDS Education and Training at the Mount Sinai Institute for Advanced Medicine.
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community
From left: David B. Sachar, MD; Joanna S. Sachar; and Bruce E. Sands, MD, the Dr. Burrill B. Crohn Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Gastroenterology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Friends, family, faculty, and staff gathered in December to recognize David B. Sachar, MD, and his wife Joanna S. Sachar, for their many contributions to the field of gastroenterology and to celebrate the naming of a conference room in their honor at the Susan and Leonard Feinstein Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinical Center on The Mount Sinai Hospital campus. For nearly 50 years, Dr. Sachar, a Clinical Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, has contributed to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) research and patient care, and served as a mentor to generations of medical students, residents, and fellows. He served as the founding director of the Burrill B. Crohn Research Foundation, and helped lay the foundation for Mount Sinai’s Feinstein IBD Clinical Center. Dr. Sachar’s significant impact on the field of IBD was recognized in 2014, when he received the lifetime achievement award from the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America.
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community
Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, in the documentary The Resilient Heart.
The Resilient Heart, a new feature-length documentary on the work of Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, Director of Mount Sinai Heart and Physician-in-Chief of The Mount Sinai Hospital, was presented on Wednesday, December 14, at the New York Academy of Medicine. Nearly 300 people attended the screening of the film, which explores the history of cardiovascular disease, its evolution into a global epidemic, and how research, global health initiatives, and policy are aiding populations worldwide. The film tells this story through Dr. Fuster’s day-to-day work. Led by the Emmy-Award-winning director Susan Froemke, a film crew traveled with Dr. Fuster for a year as he pursued projects with partners in Colombia, Spain, Kenya, and Grenada, as well as Harlem and other parts of the United States. Along the way, the film shows firsthand the impact one doctor and his team can have when the mission is to improve lives through research-based cardiovascular education, mentoring, and gentle inspiration. Dr. Fuster says in the film, “If I have the chance to think in my last hour, I want to be sure that I can say, ‘Yes, I have done something that’s not for me, but for someone else.’ And to me that is a critical issue.” The Resilient Heart will be shown during the Tribeca Film Festival in April.
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.
