Engagement | Mount Sinai Today

Women With Disabilities Experience Barriers to Access and Disparities in Health Care

Updated on Nov 14, 2025 | Community, Engagement, Featured

Arianny Ramirez, right, a Clinical Research Coordinator in the Spinal Cord Injury Program at The Mount Sinai Hospital, demonstrates patient care in a staff training video with physical therapist Alexandra McGivern.

Intersectionality is a crucial consideration as providers treat patients and understand their needs inside and outside health care facilities, said Arianny Ramirez, a Clinical Research Coordinator in the Spinal Cord Injury Program at The Mount Sinai Hospital, who was the featured speaker for a virtual talk hosted by the Office for Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) at Mount Sinai. The session, “Health Care Disparities and Women with Disabilities,” is available here.

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

Arianny Ramirez

Ms. Ramirez, a woman of color with a physical disability, discussed health care challenges at both a personal level and a population level. She said the health care community must work together to understand the intersection of sexism, racism, and ableism, and its effect on women with disabilities. “The biggest obstacles I face in my life as a woman with a disability are the barriers and limits society places on me,” she said.

After an accidental fall that paralyzed her from the waist down at age 18, Mrs. Ramirez realized that her life and the lives of many others would be easier if the world were designed with disabilities in mind.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 36 million women in the United States have disabilities. This number is expected to continue growing, says Mrs. Ramirez, and “women with disabilities face more difficulty than women without disabilities in accessing health care screenings.” Routine physical exams, mammogram, Pap smears, sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing, and eye exams are just a few of the screenings that are more challenging to access for women with disabilities.

Physical and attitudinal barriers often prevent this population from seeking and receiving equitable and appropriate health care. The necessary equipment, machinery, and devices to care for these women are not always present in doctors’ offices, Mrs. Ramirez said of clinical care in the United States.

Additionally, stereotypes and discrimination are often directed toward people with disabilities in health care settings, making them feel uncomfortable and excluded, and there are limited training and guidelines in place to address the specific needs of women with disabilities.

“Let’s start with our physical barriers,” Mrs. Ramirez said. “They consist of a lack of adaptive examination tables and scales, inaccessible testing rooms, and inaccessible diagnostic equipment. Over 90 percent of physicians’ offices do not have wheelchair-accessible scales.”

The Mount Sinai Health System is working to address these disparities with a variety of measures, including a course created by the Department of Rehabilitation and Human Performance for Mount Sinai physicians and other providers in fields such as family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, and emergency medicine. Mount Sinai employees can register for the course, “Improving Health Care Access for Women with Spinal Cord Injury” on Mount Sinai’s PEAK site.

Mount Sinai’s Spinal Cord Injury Research Center also offers information to the public about support groups, exercise, and clinical trials, including one addressing access for women with spinal cord injuries.

Ultimately, Mrs. Ramirez called for the public to consider the world from a different perspective.

“I invite all of you to just look around your environment. Whether it’s in the office, the structure that you live in, you work in, or your commute, and think ‘what if I did have a disability? What if I did have knee surgery and there wasn’t a lip in the sidewalk that I couldn’t get over or something?’” she said. “Be mindful of the experiences other people are having and remember that a disability can happen to anyone. One can become disabled at any point in your life, and you can be a part of this community in the future as well. If you do your part and advocate for structural change, this can improve the environment around us and open the door for women with disabilities to get the care they need and live their lives.”

Speaking as a woman with a disability and a professional in rehabilitation, Ms. Ramirez called on the health care community to take four measures: Increase professional education, training, and technical assistance so providers understand disability cultural competency; implement new monitoring and accountability laws and practices to increase oversight; use accreditations to ensure health care facilities comply with accessibility guidelines; and create a universal design that can be applied to any facility to care for and welcome people with disabilities uniformly.

“Until ableism becomes a conscious thought in nondisabled people’s minds, only then will true equality be achieved,” she said.

Get more disabilities-related resources from the Mount Sinai Office for Diversity and Inclusion

HOLA Volunteers at Community Soup Kitchen

Updated on Nov 14, 2025 | Community, Engagement

HOLA volunteers, from left to right: Awanda Canelo, Frank Pabon, Shawn Lee, and Kelley Gonzalez. Photo credit: Angel Marquez

Members of HOLA, the Heritage of LatinX Alliance Employee Resource Group at Mount Sinai Health System, recently partnered with The Father’s Heart Ministries by volunteering at the organization’s soup kitchen and food pantry.

“It was very sad at first seeing the long line of people in the rain two hours before the pantry opened,” said Frank Pabon, Director of Operations/CBO at The Mount Sinai Hospital, who, along with Paul Sanabria, Project Manager, Quality Operations, and Awanda Canelo, a billing coordinator, helped to organize the volunteers. “However, it was so rewarding assisting with the food distribution and knowing that we helped families put food on the table.”

He added, “We were glad that we could help serve so many people. This experience made us especially thankful during the holiday season.”

The Father Heart Ministries offers a variety of programs, such as the soup kitchen and food pantry, tutoring, and job training programs. On the day the HOLA members volunteered, December 9, the food pantry served about 900 people.

Medical Student Michelle Tran, Whose Non-Profit Combats Anti-Asian Hate, Is Featured on NBC Special

Updated on Nov 14, 2025 | Community, Engagement, Featured, School

Michelle Tran and her friend Howard Chen donate a personal safety alarm to a senior in Manhattan’s Chinatown in April 2021.

When Michelle Tran is not pursing her MD/PhD degree with a specialization in cancer immunology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, she is busy helping Asian Americans protect themselves against hate crimes through Soar Over Hate, the non-profit she created last March.

Soar Over Hate has since raised more than $100,000 and distributed more than 24,000 protective noise-making devices primarily to elderly and vulnerable Asian Americans in New York City and San Francisco—as well as to the Mount Sinai Health System’s essential health care workers who commute to work. Her organization has established a need-based college scholarship fund for local high school students, arranged community health fairs in Manhattan’s Chinatown, and offers free, culturally competent mental-health therapy—either remote or in-person—in several languages, including Mandarin, Cantonese, and Korean, to victims of anti-Asian hate crimes.

Mount Sinai medical students volunteered with Soar Over Hate to distribute 1,000 personal safety devices, whistles, and booklets about reporting hate incidents to elderly in Manhattan’s Chinatown in April 2021. In addition to Michelle Tran, student volunteers included: Alyce Kuo, Serena Zheng, Axel Epié, Fred Kwon, Rachel Levantovsky, and Matthew Lin.

Recently, Ms. Tran was among 10 “fearless change makers” who were named 2021 L’Oréal Paris Women of Worth by the popular beauty brand. L’Oréal Paris USA donated $20,000 to Soar Over Hate and, in November, flew Ms. Tran and the nine other Women of Worth award recipients to Paris for a special ceremony. On Thursday, December 16, at 8 pm, the women and their non-profit work will be featured on an NBC special hosted by L’Oréal Paris and including guest appearances by Helen Mirren, Camila Cabello, Gemma Chan, and Eva Longoria. One of this year’s awardees will receive an additional $25,000 for their philanthropy.

“Asian hate, unfortunately, does exist,” says Ms. Tran. “I felt very disheartened by what was going on in my backyard and with the people around me who were being harassed, and attacked, and physically hurt, and I wanted to do something. A colleague of mine was attacked on his way to work and he still avoids the subway. The long-term impact of these incidents leaves a mental scar. So we’re helping to address the healing of the community, and we’re empowering youth with scholarships.”

In the fall, Soar Over Hate provided six low-income high-school seniors in New York City with scholarships of between $500 and $1,000, based on their essays about addressing anti-Asian hate.

Initially, Ms. Tran started her charity as a GoFundMe page with the help of teenager Tiffany Yuen. Ms. Tran is Ms. Yuen’s mentor through the organization, Apex for Youth, which partners Asian American professionals with low-income youth. The money they raised was used to purchase personal safety alarms and whistles for the elderly and supported several community events that featured self-defense classes and health screenings.

Michelle Tran in Chinatown

But Ms. Tran soon realized she could continue to pursue her two “passions” of growing her charity and focusing on her MD/PhD studies by combining efforts with her friend Kenji Jones, who ran a similar Asian American grassroots effort. That is when they developed the current line-up of services for Soar Over Hate. This fall, she was thrilled to learn that she had received a L’Oréal Paris Women of Worth award.

Ms. Tran also credits her mentors at Mount Sinai with providing support for her advocacy work. She works in the lab of Nina Bhardwaj, MD, PhD, Director of Immunotherapy and Co-Director of Cancer Immunology, who serves as her Principal Investigator. Ms. Tran is a co-President of the Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association at Mount Sinai, supervised by Nolan Kagetsu, MD, Clinical Professor of Radiology, and Ann-Gel Palermo, DrPH, MPH, Senior Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. She is also a student representative on Mount Sinai’s Committee on Anti-Asian Bias and Racism, which is led by Amanda J. Rhee, MD, Associate Professor of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine, and James C. Tsai, MD, MBA, President of the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai, and Chair of Ophthalmology at the Mount Sinai Health System.

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

Updated on Nov 14, 2025 | Engagement

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, Engagement, 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 | Engagement, 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.”

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