Diversity and Inclusion | Mount Sinai Today

Mount Sinai’s ADAPT Employee Resource Group Is Raising Disability Awareness

Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Diversity and Inclusion

A message of inclusion, accessibility, and equity is being delivered by All Differing Abilities Partnering Together (ADAPT) a system-wide Employee Resource Group (ERG) centering on the disability community. Formerly known as the Abilities ERG, ADAPT is newly rebranded and has three new co-leaders.

Yi-Ting Chiang

The ERG’s purpose is to create a more inclusive work environment, raise awareness, create safe spaces and open dialogues, and educate the Mount Sinai Health System community on issues important to people with disabilities.

Co-leads Yi-Ting Chiang, Elva Herrera, and Joy Womble work together to encourage the community and assist in breaking down barriers.

“As a health system, we can do more to better support employees with disabilities and one another. This ERG can help,” says Ms. Chiang, Technology Specialist II at the Mount Sinai Health System.

Joy Womble

The group focuses not only on people with disabilities, but also allies, families, caretakers of people with disabilities and anyone who wants to learn more.

They emphasize that disabilities can be apparent or non-apparent, which may not be obvious or noticeable to someone else.

“Both advocacy and education are needed to raise disability awareness,” says Ms. Womble, Senior Instructional Designer in Human Resources for Mount Sinai. “ADAPT wants to part of the change that drives equity across the Health System, our country, and the world.”

The mission of the ADAPT ERG is to:

Strive toward building a fully inclusive work culture by maximizing the potential of employees’ talents and strengths
Raise awareness of disability to purposefully and consciously create a diverse environment that is free from discrimination, bias, and inequity
Create a safe and empathetic space where people with disabilities, their allies, and/or loved ones can openly discuss issues important to them
Provide an educational forum for sharing ideas and information to improve care for patients with disabilities throughout the Health System
Support open dialogue between employees and stakeholders on physical and digital accessibility issues in the workplace

Elva Herrera

“ADAPT is not only for those with disabilities,” says Ms. Herrera, Lead Clinical Research Coordinator II for Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at The Mount Sinai Hospital. “This group is for anyone who wants to learn and support those with disabilities. You are welcome to bring your ideas. Your voice will help us raise awareness and make a difference.”

ADAPT is looking to grow its membership and engagement with hopes of increasing knowledge and normalizing disabilities in the Mont Sinai community and beyond for a better employee and patient experience. All staff, students, faculty, trainees are welcome.

To join, or for more information and additional disabilities-related resources, please visit the Mount Sinai Office for Diversity and Inclusion site.

CARES Staff Transgender Remembrance Day

Nov 29, 2021 | Community, Diversity and Inclusion, Psychiatry

CARES staff from left to right: Chang (Betty) Wang, MD (child and adolescent psychiatry fellow); Aliza Grossberg, MD (PGY-2); Margaret Rauen, PhD (psychologist).

The Comprehensive Adolescent Rehabilitation and Education Service (CARES) at Mount Sinai Morningside integrates intensive psychological treatment with a complete high school education through the New York City Department of Education’s ReStart Academy (District 79), and it is the only one of its kind in the country.

In recognition of Transgender Day of Remembrance and with input from students, the CARES community put together events celebrating transgender and gender diverse identities. Students and staff had discussions throughout the week on the significance of Transgender Day of Remembrance, followed by an optional viewing of Disclosure, a documentary highlighting how transgender people have been represented in film and television. Students were also able to opt-in to watching a shorter video on Schuyler Bailar, the first openly transgender NCAA Division I swimmer. During the week, students and staff wore Transgender Pride Flag stickers, as well as individual pronoun stickers, and the CARES team hung a Transgender Pride Flag that will remain up throughout the year.

Mount Sinai Neuroscience Student Earns NIH Fellowship to Study Substance Use Disorders

Oct 29, 2021 | Diversity and Inclusion, Featured, Research

Can the bacteria in your gut influence addictive behavior? That is the question that Katherine Meckel is studying and trying to answer. Currently a fifth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Ms. Meckel is one of 31 young scientists from across the country to be honored with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Blueprint Diversity Specialized Predoctoral to Postdoctoral Advancement in Neuroscience (D-SPAN) Award.

The award will provide Ms. Meckel with a six-year, $447,000 fellowship to fund the remaining two years of her PhD studies, as well as four years of postdoctoral research. The D-SPAN Award recognizes outstanding trainees from historically underrepresented communities in the sciences.

Working in the lab of Drew D. Kiraly, MD, PhD, Ms. Meckel is drawing upon her background in gastroenterology and neuropharmacology to study the effects of the gut microbiome on gene expression and behavior in a rodent model of cocaine use disorder.

“When we look at human patients and also animal models of substance use disorders, we see highly altered gene expression in response to cocaine and other drugs of abuse,” she explains. “This seems to emerge from long-term adaptations or ‘molecular scars’ which affect the ability of gene sequences in the DNA to be accessed and expressed. My work seeks to understand how gut bacteria and the metabolites they produce regulate the structure and accessibility of the DNA, influencing gene expression and ultimately drug-seeking behaviors.”

Dr. Kiraly, her dissertation advisor, praises her tenacity in establishing a new line of research within the field of neuroscience. “Katherine has generated a tremendous amount of exciting data, which provides insight into the mechanisms of gut-brain communication,” says Dr. Kiraly, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, and Neuroscience, at Icahn Mount Sinai. “Her work holds potential to uncover novel pathways for drug development, which may one day lead to much-needed treatments for patients with substance use disorders.”

Trusting Her Gut Intuition

As an undergraduate, Ms. Meckel pursued a rigorous five-year dual degree program in Voice Performance and Biochemistry at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. There, she conducted neuropharmacology research under Bruce Hetzler, PhD, studying the effects of methylphenidate (Ritalin) on rodent behavior and visual processing.

After graduating, she joined the Section of Gastroenterology at the University of Chicago, working under Joel Pekow, MD, and Marc Bissonnette, MD, to study the effects of diet and metabolism on inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal cancer.

Ms. Meckel credits her time in gastroenterology for encouraging a more integrative physiological approach, which now informs her studies. “Often times in neuroscience, we study the brain in isolation,” she says. “But it’s important to consider that the brain exists in communication with the other peripheral organs throughout the body, and they influence each other’s activity.”

Building Community for Students With Disabilities

Ms. Meckel has also emerged as a leader in disability rights since joining Icahn Mount Sinai. Together with classmates Jessica Pintado Silva and Marisa Goff, she co-founded Disability Rights, Education, and Awareness at Mount Sinai (DREAMS), which provides peer mentoring and support to graduate students with visible and invisible disabilities.

“As a queer, disabled individual, I often compare living with invisible chronic illness to ‘being in the closet.’ If you didn’t know me well, you probably wouldn’t realize I am disabled,” she says. “But much of my life outside of lab is characterized by managing chronic health flares.”

Ms. Meckel expressed gratitude to her advisors and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for supporting her training. “I hope that my experience inspires disabled and chronically ill trainees to continue in the sciences,” she says. “So we can share our unique perspectives and bring new innovation to STEM.”

Eleven Medical Schools Join Mount Sinai’s Project to Eliminate Racism and Bias From Medical Education

Oct 28, 2021 | Diversity and Inclusion, Featured

The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has selected 11 medical schools to join a newly launched collaboration to eliminate racism and bias in medical education.

The project—called Anti-Racist Transformation in Medical Education (ART in Med Ed)—will engage these schools in using training modules and tools that were developed at Mount Sinai to foster and manage anti-racist cultural change. The new collaboration was made possible by a generous grant from the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation.

Last summer, Icahn Mount Sinai invited medical schools throughout North America to send proposals to join this effort. Forty-eight schools, or approximately one-third of all accredited medical schools, responded. Eleven were chosen based on their commitment to implementing a transformational-change strategy and willingness to build a diverse team of leaders, faculty, students, and staff that would be able to participate over three years. Mount Sinai sought to include private and public schools, as well as MD and DO programs, from a broad geographic range.

Leona Hess, PhD

One of the participating schools is the David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM) at the University of California, Los Angeles. According to Julian McNeil, DGSOM’s Racism Program Manager, the medical school had committed $5 million to anti-racism efforts in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and inequities exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The ART in Med Ed program, he says, will provide DGSOM with a framework to guide these efforts.

“It was clear that Mount Sinai had given considerable thought to how organizational science and change management could be applied to advancing anti-racism efforts in a medical school context, and that is what we loved about the project,” Mr. McNeil explains. “This is a model for change that is grounded in theory that has been tested and refined, and that provides us with best practices to guide our work.”

The University of the Incarnate Word School of Osteopathic Medicine (UIWSOM), based in San Antonio, Texas, is also participating in the ART in Med Ed project. UIWSOM graduated its first class in May 2021, and was motivated to participate in ART in Med Ed for several reasons, says Linda Grace Solis, PhD, Assistant Professor of Applied Humanities, Department of Clinical and Applied Science Education.

Students had expressed an interest in exploring ways in which the school was perpetuating ideas that could lead to inequities, she says, and had voiced concerns over elements of the curriculum, such as the predominant use of imagery of white people in dermatology classes.

Jennifer Dias, a rising third-year medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine, is devoting a scholarly year to helping run the Art in Med Ed project.

“What appealed to us about ART in Med Ed was the project’s structure and its focus on change management,” Dr. Solis says. “I see that as the secret sauce that is missing from most diversity, equity, and inclusion work because it helps people understand why this change matters so that they get on board.”

The Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons is also part of the ART in Med Ed project. “It is helpful to be part of a group that is moving in the same direction, and to have an external partner guiding us, because it takes some of the weight off our shoulders in figuring out how to do this,” says Todd A. Bates, PhD, MSEd, MA, Education and Learning Specialist with the Center for Education Research and Evaluation at Columbia University, who is working with Mount Sinai. “There is also a degree of hopefulness that comes with participating in a project that has a proven track record in this area. All these elements are a huge benefit in making progress and achieving more equity for our students, faculty, and staff.”

Leona Hess, PhD, Director of Strategy and Equity Education Programs at Icahn Mount Sinai, who helped create and now leads the ART in Med Ed project, says ongoing feedback from the participating students, staff, and faculty at each school will help Mount Sinai improve the project.

“We want to see whether the schools are able to use our learning strategy, content, design, and support to build capacity and address and dismantle racism regardless of their location or demographics,” Dr. Hess says. “As we gather that information, we will refine our learning modules and tools and look at the possibility of bringing more schools on board.”

The goal, she says, is for all medical schools to ultimately dismantle racism and bias from their learning environments so that all patients receive health care that is just, equitable, and free of racism and bias.

The following is a list of all 11 schools that will be part of Mount Sinai’s ART in Med Ed project:

College of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan

Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles

Duke University School of Medicine

East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine

The George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences

The Ohio State University College of Medicine

University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix

University of Minnesota Medical School

University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine

University of the Incarnate Word School of Osteopathic Medicine

Phillips School of Nursing Announces Scholarship for Students From Underrepresented Groups

Oct 21, 2021 | Community, Diversity and Inclusion, Featured

The Phillips School of Nursing at Mount Sinai Beth Israel has granted nursing scholarships to eight students who belong to racial and ethnic groups that are underrepresented in nursing.

Funded by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, the scholarships are part of the agency’s Nursing Workforce Diversity Program, which strives to encourage diversity in an inclusive and equitable environment.

This year’s recipients are Maria Colon, Paola Coronel, Jeefry De La Cruz, Jessica Guaman, Autumn Johnson, Julissa Lorenzo, Thayshamarie Rodriguez, and Adenike Strachan.

“These scholarships build on our efforts to recruit and graduate a diverse group of students,” Todd F. Ambrosia, DNP, MSN, APRN, FNP-BC, FNAP, Dean of the Phillips School of Nursing, says of the program. “We are proud to help these students acquire the skills necessary to excel in today’s demanding health care environment.”

The Phillips School of Nursing has received a grant of more than $1.8 million over the next four years to continue distributing the scholarships. It expects to help fund the education of 10 to 12 students from underrepresented groups each year.

According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, nursing students from minority backgrounds represent only 32 percent of students enrolled in baccalaureate programs. The scholarships will enable these students to enter and graduate from the nursing program, covering the student’s entire time in the program, which lasts for 15 months, or four semesters. It will provide 70 percent of tuition as well as a small stipend to help with living expenses.

Once students are accepted into the Phillips School of Nursing, they are automatically considered for the scholarship. To qualify, students must be educationally or economically disadvantaged and come from a minority background that is underrepresented in nursing. This includes those who are American Indian or Alaska Native, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, or Hispanic of any race.

In addition to scholarship funds, the program provides academic and support services to all nursing students. Services include group and individual tutoring sessions, mentoring, a writing center, and career readiness workshops.

HOLA Donates School Supplies to “Hour Children” Nonprofit Group

Sep 23, 2021 | Community, Diversity and Inclusion

Much needed back-to-school supplies were recently donated to children of incarcerated women and other community members by HOLA, the Heritage of Latinx Alliance Employee Resource Group at the Mount Sinai Health System. HOLA made the donations in collaboration with Hour Children, a nonprofit organization that supports incarcerated women and their children.

“We were very happy to be able to give back in such a time of need,” says Kelley Gonzalez, an Information Technology trainer, who organized the event with Awanda Canelo, a billing coordinator and fellow HOLA member, and Kellie Phelan, the program coordinator of Hour Children. HOLA members collected school supplies such as pens, pencils, books, crayons, and hand sanitizer, which were dropped off at the Corporate Services Center on 42nd Street. HOLA also provided an Amazon wish list link so that those who were not onsite could participate in the donation. On Tuesday, September 7, HOLA members passed out the donations, which had been loaded into colorful backpacks, at the Hour Children Community Pantry in Long Island City.

“It was a pleasure personally having the opportunity not only to collect donations, but in partnership with Hour Children and our Mount Sinai colleagues, we were able to hand out all of these supplies,” Ms. Canelo says. “Seeing the smiles on the children reminds us that our children are our future leaders.”

The organizers of the event expressed sincere thanks to those who donated supplies and to staff members, including billing coordinator Yvette Robles, who took out time of their schedules to help hand out supplies.

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