Diversity and Inclusion | Mount Sinai Today

A Celebration of Mount Sinai’s Administrative Fellows

Sep 22, 2021 | Community, Diversity and Inclusion, Featured

The new graduates of the Mount Sinai Health System’s Administrative Fellowship Program

The Office for Diversity and Inclusion, along with hospital leaders from across the Mount Sinai Health System, recently hosted a virtual ceremony to celebrate and honor the four young professionals who completed the Health System’s Administrative Fellowship Program in 2021.

The innovative two-year program is designed to recruit, train, and promote underrepresented graduates of master’s degree programs into leadership roles within the Health System.

“This is one of our most impactful programs and one in which we take great pride,” said Pamela Abner, MPA, Vice President and Chief Diversity Operations Officer for Mount Sinai Hospital Groups, at the ceremony on June 29. The graduating fellows were Alia Barnes, MPH, Priya Jain, MHA, Alpha Mansaray, MHA, and Emily Spence, MBA. They sincerely thanked their site leaders and mentors, and described their wide-ranging duties during the fellowship, which coincided with the most challenging days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Fellows served rotations at Mount Sinai hospitals in fields such as medical education, financial planning and resource allocation, real estate management, data analytics, and the patient and staff experience. Fulfilling the mission and promise of the program, the Fellows have all moved into full-time managerial roles within the Health System.

David Reich, MD, President and Chief Operating Officer of The Mount Sinai Hospital, and President, Mount Sinai Queens, said the Administrative Fellowship program played a vital role. “Probably the most important thing about this program is that it builds a bridge to our community, it builds a bridge toward improving diversity, equity, and inclusion within our Health System,” Dr. Reich said. “And it sends a message to everyone in the Health System that we value our relationship with our community and are developing our future leaders.”

In July 2021, four new Fellows started the program: Abiola Baruwa, MS, Loudmila Hassan, MHA, Lenjo Kilo, MHA, and Jairo Munoz, MS.

The Mount Sinai Health System is accepting applications for the 2022 Administrative Fellowship Program through Friday, October 1. All eligible people, including Mount Sinai employees and students, are encouraged to apply. Contact the Office for Diversity and Inclusion at diversity@mountsinai.org for more information.

Mount Sinai Administrative Fellows Share Takeaway Lessons

Four young professionals recently completed the Mount Sinai Administrative Fellowship, a two-year program developed by the Office for Diversity and Inclusion with strong support from top leadership. The Fellows served rotations at Mount Sinai hospitals in a wide range of administrative fields. In a recent graduation ceremony, they expressed their gratitude to their mentors and discussed some lessons learned.

Alia Barnes, MPH, Integration Program Manager, Department of Medical Education
Administrative Fellowship Graduate, Department of Medical Education

“Embrace uncertainty, remain inquisitive, and ask questions. And sometimes we have to understand that change is good. When we are working collectively and collaboratively, it can be really beautiful.”

Priya Jain, MHA, Administrative Manager, Oncology Services, The Mount Sinai Hospital
Administrative Fellowship Graduate, The Mount Sinai Hospital

“Take challenges head on, and don’t be afraid to make mistakes. We will not always have all of the answers, but we are lucky to work with people who are willing to help us grow, mentor us, and shape the careers that we strive to achieve.”

Emily Spence, MBA, Real Estate Portfolio Administrator
Administrative Fellowship Graduate, Real Estate Services and Facilities

“It’s not about what you know, it’s about what you are willing to learn. If your current role does not fit who you want to be, don’t force it. Build relationships and create your own seat at the table.”

Alpha Mansaray, MHA, Clinical Integration Manager, Mount Sinai Health Partners
Administrative Fellowship Graduate, Mount Sinai West

“Take ownership. Hold yourself responsible for the success of whatever you are working on. And consider any negative feedback to be an opportunity. This allows you to brainstorm and look for ways to become better—so it becomes a win-win.”

Mount Sinai Rolls Out Its Anti-Racism Program to Other Medical Schools

Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Diversity and Inclusion, Featured

Mount Sinai’s Anti-Racist Transformation (ART) in Medical Education leaders: top row, from left, Leona Hess, PhD; and David Muller, MD; and bottom row, medical student Jennifer Dias.

Four years ago, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai launched a culture transformation initiative to eliminate racism and bias from its medical education program. Now, Mount Sinai is looking to share its Racism and Bias Initiative, which includes a virtual leaning platform, with eight to ten other medical schools, with the support of a new grant from the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation.

Icahn Mount Sinai recently sent a Request for Proposal (RFP) to medical schools throughout North America and expects to choose eight to ten that will participate in this community of practice, which offers training modules and tools that lead to cultural change. The project is called Anti-Racist Transformation (ART) in Medical Education.

“Many medical schools are interested in the approach we have taken here at Mount Sinai,” says David Muller, MD, Dean for Medical Education, and Marietta and Charles C. Morchand Chair in Medical Education, at Icahn Mount Sinai, who is one of the grant’s principal investigators. “We have been invited to present at a number of institutions around the country—from grand rounds to seminars and workshops. The support we received from the Macy Foundation, combined with all of the work we’ve been doing, made us feel we could bring eight to ten schools into the fold, share with them the process that is working for us, and evolve together as a community.” Eventually, Mount Sinai will open its program to all medical schools wishing to participate.

Mount Sinai began implementing its change management strategy in earnest in 2018. In December 2020, Dr. Muller and two Mount Sinai colleagues—Leona Hess, PhD, Director of Strategy and Equity Education Programs; and Ann-Gel S. Palermo, DrPH, MPH, Senior Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—co authored a paper about their work that appeared in Academic Medicine. Their paper, “Addressing and Undoing Racism and Bias in the Medical School Learning and Work Environment,” sparked interest from other medical schools.

“It’s not enough just to have good intentions,” says Dr. Hess, who is leading Mount Sinai’s current change-management platform and is a co-principal investigator on the grant. “Through this process we’ve really grown to respect what it takes, what are some of the structures, mindsets, and values that we have to instill to get us to a place that’s free of racism and bias, which is our vision. ART in Med Ed is an answer to how we can get there collectively.”

Jennifer Dias, a leader in anti-racism activism, is a third member of the grant’s leadership team and a rising third-year medical student who will be devoting a scholarly year to the initiative.

Watch this video for additional information about Mount Sinai's ART in Med Ed program

Improving Diversity in Autism Genomic Research

Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community, Diversity and Inclusion, Pediatrics, Research

The Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment partnered with Centro Ann Sullivan Del Perú to serve children with autism spectrum disorder and their families. Above, Pilar Trelles, MD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, conducting an evaluation with a family in Lima, Peru.

Genomic research is now an integral part of the study and treatment of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and related neurodevelopmental disabilities, so it is crucial to include more ethnically and racially diverse populations, said Pilar Trelles, MD, a psychiatrist and researcher at the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment, who was the featured speaker for a virtual talk hosted by the Office for Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) at Mount Sinai. The session, “Forming Community Ties to Improve Diversity in Autism Genomic Research,” is available here.

The talk was part of the Raising Disability Awareness Virtual Talk Series, launched by ODI in 2020, which featured speakers from around the Mount Sinai Health System and the community to raise awareness and promote an inclusive and equitable work place and health care environment for people with disabilities.

“Data contained in the National Human Genome Research Institute and European Bioinformatics Institute Genome-Wide Association Studies Catalog indicate that most of the individual genetic samples—78 percent—come from individuals of European descent,” said Dr. Trelles, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “And this is translating into clinical practice, because we are learning less about individuals of diverse ancestry.”

Pilar Trelles, MD, is a psychiatrist and researcher with the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Dr. Trelles and other staff at the Seaver Autism Center are dedicated to caring for people of all ages with ASD, leading clinical trials, and furthering research into drug development, molecular targeting, neurology, and genomics. She said that disparities and barriers exist overall for people with ASD who belong to minority groups. Some of these barriers include lack of trust in research—often based on historic inequities in science and health care—limited representation of minorities in science, a lack of cultural competency among physicians and scientists, and a lack of infrastructure.

To combat disparity and increase the accessibility to care, Dr. Trelles collaborated with families and children with ASD in Peru, creating an international partnership between the nonprofit Centro Ann Sullivan Del Perú and the Seaver Autism Center. The partnership is intended to “promote family and caregiver empowerment, educational programs, and collection of bio-specimens for genetic analysis and clinical information,” she said. The goal for the future of health care for people with ASD and their families is to develop a strong partnership where there is a clear and direct benefit to the community.

“It cannot be a one-time thing, it has to be a sustainable model that will last over time,” Dr. Trelles said. As a result of increasing accessibility where possible, her team found that compared with 2016, there has been a significant increase of Asian, Black, mixed ancestry, and Hispanic people in research participation.

Dr. Trelles ended her talk on a hopeful note. “The idea is to work with communities that could benefit from the expertise that we have, where we can actually bring a clear benefit, and provide better care and education for families,” she said. “So that we can build trust and transparency moving forward.” For more information, visit the Seaver Autism Center site.

Additional disabilities-related resources are available on the Mount Sinai Office for Diversity and Inclusion site.

Sharely Fred Torres, MD: Fostering Culturally Sensitive Therapy

Jun 23, 2021 | Diversity and Inclusion, Inside Mount Sinai Psychiatry, Psychiatry

Sharely Fred Torres, MD, with her grandfather in Puerto Rico.

The racial and ethnic disparity in mental health care is a critical issue facing psychiatry—and health care as a whole. Lack of access, a dearth of racially and ethnically diverse providers, and increased need across the board due to ripple effects from COVID-19 have intensified the need for minority providers. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) launched the APA SAMHSA Minority Fellowship Program to address this. Sharely Fred Torres, MD, a rising second-year resident at The Mount Sinai Hospital, was just awarded this year-long fellowship, which begins in October 2021.

“One reason I knew I wanted to go into psychiatry is that there are so few minority providers, which is not a problem that is unique to psychiatry,” she said. The Mount Sinai Hospital is at the border of two socioeconomically distinct neighborhoods of East Harlem and the Upper East Side, so the inpatient psychiatry unit sees very diverse patient populations. “In my medical training at Mount Sinai, I would say that more than 50 percent of my encounters are in Spanish. I feel really lucky that I can talk to many of my patients in their native language as a bilingual person. They’re much more comfortable with a doctor they can relate to, and more likely to be honest about topics they would otherwise keep hidden.”

The path to psychiatry

Dr. Fred Torres was born and raised in Puerto Rico, and has been interested in pursuing a career in psychiatry since she was young.

“I realized that working in medicine could allow me to work with all kinds of populations and help people in the most fundamental way possible, which is their health,” she said. Regarding her interest in psychology, she said, “I really liked thinking about what drives people’s behaviors and decisions. It applied to so many interactions I’d had.” Dr. Fred Torres’s psychology course at Harvard was taught by Professor Dan Gilbert, who inspired her to pursue psychology as her college major with an emphasis on social and cognitive neuroscience. She joined Harvard Medical School’s Family Van program, which provided disadvantaged neighborhoods in Boston with preventative health screenings such as blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar levels, as well as medications.

“I loved the medical aspects, like learning how to take someone’s blood pressure, but I also loved listening to their stories,” she said. “When the patients spoke about loss and trauma, it really became clear that the lack of access to mental health services was a huge problem in this community.” It was during these years that she also realized that many of her college peers were navigating emotional stressors in school. “I noticed mental health issues affect everyone. But not everyone seeks care.” This led her to join Harvard’s Student Mental Health Liaisons program to advocate for mental health services for college students. She worked with the director of Harvard University Health Services to ensure that freshman orientation at Harvard featured workshops on mental health services so that freshmen had the information early on, rather than waiting for a crisis to seek help.

In medical school, she became one of the first students at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai to be accepted to the Primary Care Scholars Program launched in 2015. Through this four-year scholarship for students interested in providing primary care to underserved communities, she provided longitudinal care for patients in a variety of primary care settings. Her medical school tenure was five years, because she took a scholarly year to research under the mentorship of Adriana Feder, MD, and Mercedes Perez-Rodriguez, MD, PhD. “That year really grounded my interest in psychiatry,” she said.

Research and APA SAMHSA Minority Fellowship Program

Dr. Fred Torres is grateful that she is able to take advantage of the APA SAMHSA Minority Fellowship Program for psychiatry residents who are committed to addressing mental health disparities through a scholarly project. She plans to research cultural components that shape post-trauma trajectories within the World Trade Center (WTC) first-responder cohort that Dr. Feder has been studying for many years as the associate director for research at the WTC Mental Health Program.

“When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, I was in the beginning of my scholarly research year. Being directly impacted by that experience made me realize I wanted to shift my learning to focus on trauma-based research,” she said. “I saw how in the face of trauma, despite much loss and hardship, there was also a sense of support growing in the community in Puerto Rico with people at home coming together to support one another through this shared experience. I was proud and inspired by my community.” Dr. Feder let her know that she could learn about trauma by working with the WTC cohort, a unique population affected by the same traumatic event, in which there is a significant Hispanic population as well.

Dr. Fred Torres wants to explore culturally unique resilience factors within this group. “In much of the Hispanic community, no one talks about anxiety or depression,” she said. “Instead, there is a tendency to go to church and pray when faced with life stressors.” She hypothesizes that depending on the individual, the religious factor and other culturally specific variables can serve both as a barrier to and enhancement of resilience, strength, and meaning after a traumatic incident.

Via qualitative individual interviews during her fellowship, she plans to compare the Hispanic WTC cohort to other minority and non-minority counterparts to identify culturally specific factors that contribute (or detract) to resilience. She hopes the findings from her fellowship research are ultimately incorporated into culturally sensitive therapy for trauma. The Mount Sinai Hospital’s psychiatry residency allows time for research projects in the second year, and Dr. Fred Torres’s mentors, Dr. Feder and Dr. Perez-Rodriguez, will guide her in her scholastic work.

Career plans

Once she finishes residency, Dr. Fred Torres hopes to focus on outpatient therapy for many psychiatric conditions such as personality disorders, depression, anxiety, and trauma. “I like the idea of longitudinal, years-long relationships with patients,” she said.

After residency, she hopes to continue to pursue research and academic interests in order to better inform the care she provides patients. “In this career, you can help anybody,” she said. “There’s nobody who doesn’t need health care. I feel privileged to be in a position to help someone on such a fundamental level. But within the field of psychiatry, we face unique challenges to providing care. Our practices are not as clear-cut—you can’t draw someone’s blood and with a biomarker determine that they have depression or anxiety, in the same manner that you can measure someone’s cholesterol level for example. We rely on the psychiatric interview. I enjoy this challenge of working with patients through that subjective space together.”

Furthermore, as she did in medical school and her residency with the Admissions Committees, Dr. Fred Torres hopes to continue efforts to ensure the diversity of the medical field by recruiting diverse medical trainees and increasing academic support for students who are underrepresented and/or disadvantaged in medicine.

Mount Sinai’s Department of Psychiatry is one of the largest and most prolific in the world. With our new series, Inside Mount Sinai Psychiatry, we showcase stories from every corner of our Department including our training programs, patient care teams, and scientists. We believe psychiatry and mental health are the building blocks to fulfilling lives and thriving societies; via these stories about our faculty, trainees, and staff, this series shows the myriad ways we work toward that. Whether it’s manning the front desk of an opioid treatment clinic, researching how psychedelics work in the brain, or training future clinician-scientists, our team is relentlessly pursuing the best for those suffering from mental health issues.

Learn more about the psychiatry residency at The Mount Sinai Hospital

Mount Sinai Creates LGBTQ+ Medical Fellowship That Will Serve as a National Model of Care

Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Diversity and Inclusion, Featured

The Mount Sinai Health System in 2020 launched a pioneering one-year medical fellowship program specializing in LGBTQ+ health. Its mission was to create a new primary care specialty that combined expertise in disciplines such as preventive medicine, infectious diseases, gynecology, endocrinology, psychiatry, and research, and provided holistic care to this minority population.

The American Medical Association (AMA) Foundation was so supportive of the idea that it provided Mount Sinai with funding to cover the fellowship for a second year—which begins in July—and develop a model program for future LGBTQ+ fellowships around the country. Recently, the AMA announced plans to fund 10 new fellowships in 2022, many in the South and other areas of the country where LGBTQ+ patients have more limited access to high-quality health care.

Michael M. Gaisa, MD, PhD,

“There are particular needs, both psychosocial and medical, that arise from being members of this community, and I think, until now, that has not been appreciated to the extent that it deserves to be,” says Michael M. Gaisa, MD, PhD, Director of Mount Sinai’s LGBTQ+ Health Care Fellowship, and Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases), at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

One of the fellowships’ goals, Dr. Gaisa says, is to “educate more knowledgeable, competent, and sensitive providers on a national scale.” Mount Sinai’s new fellowship is a “blend of subspecialties that have traditionally been siloed.” Typically, he adds, doctors do not “complete their conventional residencies or fellowships with the breadth of experience bundled into our LGBTQ+ fellowship curriculum, so that’s what we’re trying to accomplish.”

In July, Roy Zucker, MD, will be the first physician to have completed Mount Sinai’s fellowship. An internal medicine and infectious disease doctor who practices in Tel Aviv, Dr. Zucker started the fellowship in New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic last summer. Admittedly, the timing “wasn’t perfect,” he says. But as New York began to open up he was able to transition from providing telehealth to in-person care. He also spent the year conducting research, and working with Mount Sinai Innovation Partners to create an app that would make it easier for gay men to access PrEP, medication that prevents the spread of HIV, through Mount Sinai’s MyChart patient portal.

Dr. Zucker is active on social media and uses his platform to promote the need for health screenings, vaccinations, and harm reduction from recreational drug use among LGBTQ+ people. In June, he held community-wide discussions about harm reduction in drug use in advance of the New York City Pride Parade.

In general, Dr. Zucker says, lesbian women tend not to seek out preventive care. As a result, they do not receive the routine mammograms and Pap tests that would enable them to be diagnosed at earlier stages of breast or cervical cancer when they can be treated more successfully. “In this population there’s many more cancers just because of a lack of screening,” he says.

Roy Zucker, MD

Doctors also need to be educated about LGBTQ+ health, he adds. Some physicians mistakenly assume that lesbians do not have to be screened for cervical cancer because they are not having sex with men. In addition, doctors do not always test gay men accurately for chlamydia and gonorrhea. They perform a standalone urine test instead of swabbing other exposed anatomic sites, such as the rectum and throat, and miss the majority of positive cases.

One mission of the new fellowship is to “export expertise and awareness to other departments within Mount Sinai and on a broader scale,” says Dr. Gaisa. “Hopefully, we can change some existing paradigms and shape awareness and standard clinical practice in a more meaningful way.”

Fellows will work closely with the Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery, the Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center, and departments that are as seemingly far afield as geriatrics. “One day I work on transgender medicine, another day it’s LGBTQ+ psychiatry,” Dr. Zucker says. “I work with addiction medicine, and three days a week I work in HIV and sexually transmitted diseases clinics. For many years, we had physicians who always took care of the LGBTQ+ community—they were called ‘LGBTQ-friendly doctors.’ There was never proper training for that.”

Dr. Zucker’s connection with Mount Sinai began in early 2019, when he arrived from Tel Aviv to begin a one-month observership in HIV training with Antonio Urbina, MD, Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) at Icahn Mount Sinai. When Dr. Zucker inquired why Mount Sinai did not have a fellowship specializing in LGBTQ+ health, Dr. Urbina put him in touch with David C. Thomas, MD, Interim Chair of the Department of Medicine at Icahn Mount Sinai; and David L. Reich, MD, President of The Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai Queens. That is when the wheels started turning. In 2020, Dr. Zucker returned to Mount Sinai as the inaugural fellow.

He and Dr. Gaisa are aware of only one other LGBTQ+ medical fellowship in the world, a program at the University of California, Los Angeles, which started a year before Mount Sinai’s.

“You say to yourself, ‘I’m sure this program already exists,’ and you start looking and say, ‘Wow, where is it?’” Dr. Zucker says. “This is pioneering. We’re creating the next ambassadors for this specialty called LGBTQ+ medicine and we’re bringing it to the world. One or two people doing this each year is not enough. It’s about passing it forward.”

Rachel Levine, MD, Reflects on Her Years at Mount Sinai and Her Historic Confirmation

Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Diversity and Inclusion, Featured, Public Health

Rachel Levine, MD, was sworn in as Assistant Secretary for Health on March 26, 2021.

Rachel Levine, MD, a longtime leader in public health, was sworn in as Assistant Secretary for Health in the Department of Health and Human Services in March 2021—making history as the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Dr. Levine, who began her medical career at Mount Sinai, recently took part in an interview with Mount Sinai Today about her years of training and the road ahead.

Dr. Levine took on her new post after nearly 40 years in adolescent health and public health, most recently serving as Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Health. At her confirmation, she said, “I am both humbled by the opportunity and ready for the job.”

As a young physician at Mount Sinai, was becoming a national leader in public health one of your goals?

I received fantastic training in pediatrics and adolescent medicine at Mount Sinai, and at the time I really saw my career in academic medicine. I did my residency program at Mount Sinai from 1983 to 1986. I was chief resident from 1986 to 1987. I did my fellowship from 1987 to 1988, and then I was part of the voluntary faculty and kept my association with Mount Sinai through 1993, when I left to go to the Penn State College of Medicine. It was 10 years of association with Mount Sinai, and I found it to be absolutely wonderful. But I actually did not see myself in the type of role that I have now.

Were there experiences at Mount Sinai that you found especially formative?

Serving as Chief Resident of Pediatrics at The Mount Sinai Hospital was really one of the formative leadership experiences of my life. I had a tremendous amount of responsibility in terms of leading 25 to 30 residents, helping them with all the patients on all the floors, dealing with emergencies, and taking on administrative responsibilities for the unit—all under the mentorship of Kurt Hirschhorn, MD, then the Chair of Pediatrics, and Alexander Hyatt, MD, the Vice Chair. In years since, I think the job has been divided among two or three people, so the Chief Resident in 1986 had a lot of responsibility. I kind of joke that only now have I finally found a job that equals being Chief Resident of Pediatrics at The Mount Sinai Hospital.

Dr. Levine was the keynote speaker at Mount Sinai’s White Coat Ceremony in 2015.

Could you talk about a few of your mentors at Mount Sinai?

Probably the biggest mentor I have had in medicine is Dr. Hirschhorn, Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics, Genetics, and Medicine, and Chairman Emeritus of Pediatrics. He is just an outstanding academic medicine physician, and he was a great chair and mentor. One of my most vivid memories of Mount Sinai was morning reports, where we would present the cases that came in the night before, and Dr. Hirschhorn was always there. We would discuss the admissions and then the diagnoses and the challenges, and it was a fantastic formative learning experience.

There are so many other mentors I could name, including Dr. Hyatt; Scott Barnett, MD; Les Jaffe, MD, who was head of the adolescent program during my entire time at Mount Sinai, and Angela Diaz, MD, PhD, MPH, Director of the Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center. Dr. Diaz was a third-year resident when I was an intern and an attending in the adolescent clinic when I was a fellow. That may not seem like much of a difference, but she was senior to me, always a couple of years ahead. What I remember most from those days was her great compassion and dedication. Then and now, she is passionate about adolescent medicine and taking care of teens in the community.

The COVID-19 response was one of your top priorities as Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Health and in your federal position now. What are the biggest challenges in the pandemic now?

Our main focus now is the vaccination program. For months it was supply and the challenge of distribution and administration. But I think we are exactly at that tipping point where the most important challenge is vaccine hesitancy. Through the efforts of the Biden-Harris administration, we now have adequate supply of three safe and effective vaccines, but we now need to work past people’s hesitancy about the vaccines. One role that I hope to play is helping with this messaging as the vaccines receive Emergency Use Authorization for adolescents and perhaps younger children.

What are your other top priorities as Assistant Secretary for Health?

Addressing the continuing issue of the opioid crisis and overdoses is an important priority. We are also focusing on the public health impacts of environmental health and climate change. In an executive order, President Biden has created a new Office for Climate Change and Health Equity, and that is part of my office. As our climate changes and we look at the public health impacts, we want to make sure that we’re looking at vulnerable communities—African American communities, Latino communities, and American Indian and Native Alaskan communities. We know that there are significant health disparities, and we’re concerned that these communities are bearing the brunt of the impacts of climate change. We want to study these disparities and develop policies to address them.

What does the historic nature of your appointment mean to you?

I like to say that I may be the first transgender federal official to be confirmed by the Senate, but I won’t be the last. And here I’m building on a quote from Vice President Harris, who said that as a Black and South Asian woman, “I may be the first to hold this office, but I won’t be the last.” We’ve come a long way in the LGBTQ community, but we certainly have a long road ahead. We need to raise awareness, and we need to work in terms of health equity for LGBTQ individuals, particularly LGBTQ youth.

You were confirmed by a bipartisan vote of 52-48, but in your hearing you faced some opposition and adverse reactions. How do you handle this kind of situation?

I really think that any hostility comes from a place of fear—that people fear what they don’t understand, and so I want to educate people. Even my being the Assistant Secretary for Health shows people that transgender individuals and LGBTQ individuals are like everyone else. We’re physicians; we’re teachers; we’re lawyers; we are everywhere in society and in our government as well. And I want to show LGBTQ youth that with hard work and perseverance you can be anyone, and you can be anything.

Colleagues Salute Rachel Levine, MD:

“Dr. Levine’s appointment is both historic and emblematic of how far we have come in recognizing the accomplishments and the contributions of LGBTQI people to making our health care and our society more equitable, inclusive, and compassionate for all. Mount Sinai gave Dr. Levine a powerful foundation to build on, and today it is meaningful that during Pride Month 2021, we celebrate one of our alumni and acknowledge our ongoing commitment to enhancing and expanding service, education, and advocacy for the diverse LGBTQI communities we serve.” -Barbara Warren, PsyD, CPXP, Senior Director, LGBT Programs and Policies, Mount Sinai Office for Diversity and Inclusion

“I could not be more thrilled for Dr. Levine, or more proud of her. She is enormously accomplished and a fierce proponent of health equity, adolescent medicine, and transgender health—all critical issues that are close to my heart. We worked together when she did her pediatric training and Adolescent Medicine fellowship at Mount Sinai. I could see even then just how talented, dedicated, and compassionate she was. Dr. Levine’s confirmation is a truly historic moment, and I cannot think of anyone more deserving.” – Angela Diaz, MD, PhD, MPH, Director of the Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center

“During her confirmation hearing, Dr. Levine never lost protocol. She remained very strong and confident in where she was coming from, and that resonated with what I remember about her back at the Adolescent Health Clinic. I never ever saw her get upset about anything; she was always so competent, calm, and confident, and the patients really liked her as their physician. I’ve enjoyed following her career, and she is a perfect fit for the position.” – Leslie Jaffe, MD, Director of Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center, 1982-1989

”Dr. Levine is a great communicator with a passion for public health, and she will do a great amount of good in her areas of focus, which include opioid addiction and the COVID-19 response. That she has also been willing as a trans woman to stand up and be so visible is very important for other trans people to see for reassurance and for cisgender people to see as we break down barriers. It is an honor for us at Mount Sinai to be associated with a pioneer in an area where we now take a leadership role.” – Joshua D. Safer, MD, Executive Director of the Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery

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