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Mount Sinai Offers Challenge Coins to Recognize Staff Pandemic Efforts

Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community, Featured

In July, Mount Sinai Health System’s leadership offered staff the opportunity to receive a Commemorative COVID-19 Challenge Coin to recognize their selfless dedication and commitment during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021.

Challenge Coins, as they have become known, are an important tradition, particularly within the crisis-response community, symbolizing a catastrophic event and recognizing the teamwork and individual sacrifice needed to overcome such events. In the past, they have been given to front-line workers after historical events of importance, such as 9/11 and Hurricane Maria relief efforts in Puerto Rico.

Click here to see three Mount Sinai employees reflecting on challenge coins they received for crisis responses.

In that tradition, this coin is designed to recognize the teamwork and partnership that characterized Mount Sinai’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Inscribed on one side of the coin are those exact two words. The opposing side bears a representation of how Mount Sinai’s eight hospitals (marked by eight stars) and hundreds of ambulatory sites—bolstered by clinical, ambulatory, administrative, and operations staff, trainees, and students—united as a system that, together in service, gave and continues to give everything to those who need us most.

Many sites across Mount Sinai hosted events or had managers make rounds to distribute the coins with letters of gratitude. Many other sites are still distributing the coins.

“We offer this small but meaningful token of our deep appreciation. We hope that it will serve as one way to memorialize the remarkable efforts you have made as individuals and as members of a team that met and countered this disastrous pandemic” says Kenneth L. Davis, MD, President and Chief Executive Officer of Mount Sinai Health System.

Making Sense of the Pandemic Now

Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | COVID-19, Featured

If you are fully vaccinated, are you protected from COVID-19? Will we need booster shots? What is the best way to keep children safe as they return to school?

These and other pressing questions were discussed in an Aspen Ideas Festival virtual event, in which Kenneth Davis, MD, MD, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Mount Sinai Health System, interviewed Judith A. Aberg, Dean of System Operations for Clinical Sciences, and Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, and Harm van Bakel, PhD, Assistant Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences and a leader of Mount Sinai’s Pathogen Surveillance Program. The interview, which was released in July, can be viewed here.

Dr. Aberg, who leads Mount Sinai’s COVID-19 clinical trial efforts, shared a favorite analogy about the vaccines’ effectiveness: “An umbrella will keep you dry for the most part, but you can still get wet in a bad storm,” she said. In the same fashion, “the current vaccines are highly effective even for the circulating variants, but we do expect there will be breakthrough infections in some individuals. So I encourage everyone to get vaccinated.”

Get more COVID-19 information from Mount Sinai

How Mount Sinai is Transforming Care for Patients with Brain, Spine, and Central Nervous System Disorders

Updated on Nov 19, 2025 | Artificial Intelligence, Featured

Mount Sinai’s departments of Neurology and Neurosurgery are committed to innovation for the treatment of disorders of the brain, spine, and central nervous system. That commitment has been recognized now that The Mount Sinai Hospital’s Neurology and Neurosurgery departments were ranked for the first time among the top 10 in the nation by U.S. News & World Report.

Joshua B. Bederson, MD

For decades, the departments have expanded clinical and research programs offering ground-breaking treatments for patients with a wide range of conditions, including cancer, brain tumors, and strokes as well as neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, and multiple sclerosis, and psychiatric disorders such as major depression.

“Over the years, this process has involved recruiting the best and brightest neurosurgeons who align with my vision of highly specialized care, centers of excellence, and programs within each subspecialty that are as deep and as broad as an entire neurosurgery department,” says Joshua B. Bederson, MD, Leonard I. Malis, MD / Corinne and Joseph Graber Professor of Neurosurgery and System Chair, Department of Neurosurgery. “It’s also been meaningful to collaborate with the Department of Neurology to support their own recruits and create joint programs that provide comprehensive, well-rounded care to patients with neurological conditions.”

Added Barbara G. Vickrey, MD, MPH, System Chair, Department of Neurology, and Henry P. and Georgette Goldschmidt Professor of Neurology: “Our ranking is an acknowledgement of the Neurology Department’s leadership in clinical care on a national basis. We excel in treating the most challenging neurological patients and providing high-quality care to all of our New York City communities, including those that are under-resourced.”

In this Q&A, Dr. Bederson and Dr. Vickrey discuss how changes they have made over the years have helped patients.

What are some of the most significant changes the Department of Neurosurgery has made?

Over the past several years, our focus has been on building our divisions that deal with different disease states such as brain tumors, vascular problems and stroke, pediatric neurosurgery, movement disorders, and epilepsy. We recruited the nation’s best and brightest leaders in each one of these areas, building programs around their expertise into very strong, and sometimes very large divisions, many of which rival the average neurosurgery department in other parts of this country.

What are some national and global accomplishments?

Some of our national and global accomplishments focus on the creation of the division sub-specializations. In the cerebrovascular space, we recruited one of the world’s great leaders, Dr. J Mocco, to direct our Cerebrovascular Center, and he’s turned it into a very large service line with 10 full-time faculty. We are making groundbreaking changes to clinical treatment, including reducing the “time to needle” and treatment from the onset of stroke down to very low numbers, meaning very fast treatment times. We are achieving results that are the best in the world.

We’ve created centers of excellence around movement disorders, with one of the great deep brain stimulation programs and neurostimulation for intractable epilepsy. We have one of the largest pituitary tumor, skull base surgery, and malignant brain tumor programs in the country, with numerous NIH-funded research studies, and a large number of novel clinical trials in each of these areas. Our Division of Neurocritical Care is a large, world-class division with a unique Neuro Emergencies Management and Transfers (NEMAT) program transferring more than 1,000 patients with critical neurological illness every year.

How does the Department of Neurosurgery advance industry and academia?

Neurosurgery is inherently a technological field, and we rely very heavily on advanced digital and other technologies in the operating room. Through a significant partnership with industry, we have innovated in many creative ways, including in the use of augmented and virtual reality and the use of artificial intelligence that support our advanced digital platforms. We’ve created a new division called Sinai BioDesign, which is an incubator for innovative device creation. Here, surgeons work together with bioengineers to create new solutions for fixing problems that we face in the operating room and turn those solutions into products and companies.

How do these accomplishments result in better outcomes for neurosurgical patients?

All of our activities are aimed at improving patient outcomes. By creating centers of excellence, we can take advantage of our large health system by concentrating normally rare diseases into high volume centers, giving surgeons and other health care professionals the experience they need to become experts. They leverage the high volume to develop clinical protocols and research protocols that allow us to advance care in each disease state. Sinai BioDesign is creating new solutions and devices to help us treat conditions that require new solutions through advanced technologies, improving safety for patients.

Barbara G. Vickrey, MD, MPH

What changes has the Department of Neurology made?

The Neurology Department has grown dramatically in education, research, and clinical care in the last five years. Our department has had an approximately two-and-a-half-fold increase in NIH funding over five years. We have recruited more than 70 new faculty, who have been recruited both internally from our talented Mount Sinai graduates and from major academic institutions around the United States.

What are some specific areas of success?

We strive to improve outcomes in multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, stroke, epilepsy, headache, neuropathies, brain and spinal cord tumors, dementia, and other neurological disorders in children and adults, and we have subspecialty fellowship training programs in all these areas. We have well-regarded centers, programs, and divisions that are dedicated to this mission, such as the Corinne Goldsmith Dickinson Center for Multiple Sclerosis, which is known for providing the best available multiple sclerosis care, including access to a wide range of clinical trials and a wellness program.

How does this make a difference for patients?

The Department provides patients with a unique blend of personalized and coordinated care, groundbreaking research, and technology. This integrated approach is instrumental in our pursuit of improving outcomes.

Can you give some examples?

Patients who come to our Comprehensive Stroke Center experience better outcomes on average than those of other New York City hospitals and other comprehensive stroke centers. Our Epilepsy Program provides a spectrum of treatments from the latest medications to vagal nerve stimulation and coordinates with Neurosurgery when surgical intervention is needed, with the goal of living seizure-free. Our patients in any subspecialty can count on physicians who have experience with unusual disorders as well as more common ones. In short, patients can expect to experience the benefits of a large, academic medical center along with personalized care. It’s the best of both worlds.

Learn more about Neurosurgery at Mount Sinai

Learn more about Neurology at Mount Sinai

Should I Tell My Doctor About My Cannabis Use?

Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Featured, Mental Health, Psychiatry, Your Health

Now that New York and many other states around the country have decriminalized medicinal and recreational cannabis, some are interested in partaking. To those people, Yasmin Hurd, PhD, Director of the Addiction Institute of Mount Sinai, advises that marijuana is just like any other drug, even if it’s now legal.

Dr. Hurd is an internationally renowned expert on addiction and related psychiatric disorders who has been at the forefront of research into cannabinoid (CBD), a substance derived from the hemp plant that is now seen in many retail stores. In this Q & A, she explains what you need to know if you are heading to the cannabis dispensary and why disclosing marijuana use to your primary care physician is critical.

What advice do you have for those new to marijuana who are interested in partaking now that recreational use is legal?

You have to really be careful about where you obtain your cannabis. There are bad actors out there, and we have seen that some items which have been marketed as cannabis can actually contain products that are not. Recently, we have seen cannabis that has been laced with fentanyl, which is a highly potent and highly addictive opioid. So, the source from which you obtain your cannabis is critical. For now, the safest way to get marijuana in New York is to get a prescription from a physician and buy it in a state dispensary.

Should I tell my doctor that I am using marijuana? Why?

It is critical to tell your doctor if you are using any cannabis product. Like any drug, cannabis is broken down into various active chemicals that your body can use by liver enzymes. If you are taking any other pharmaceutical drugs, cannabis may interact with the same liver enzymes and either diminish or increase the activity beyond its intended use. So, your doctor absolutely has to know to avoid a potentially dangerous drug interaction.

One of the benefits of legalization is that there should not be any risk in being honest with your doctor about your cannabis use. The more honest that you can be, the better medical care you can receive.

Is it true that marijuana is non-addictive?

Many people don’t realize that you can become addicted to cannabis. In fact, the rate of diagnosis of “cannabis use disorder” is about 30 percent in people who frequently use the drug. That percentage is not much different from highly addictive drugs like cocaine and opioids even though cannabis is not as highly addictive.

The reason that we have such a high prevalence of cannabis use disorder being diagnosed is that a greater number of people use cannabis, so more people can convert into addiction. Often, the higher addiction is due to the higher potency of today’s cannabis.

What specifically is different about today’s marijuana?

Today’s recreational cannabis has a very high concentration of THC (short for delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol), which is the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis. It has gone from approximately four percent THC to, in some products, nearly 24 percent. And certain products, even those obtained from dispensaries, could have 70 percent THC. This is much higher than 10 or 20 years ago.

The greater the THC concentration, the greater the potential impact on a user’s mental health, and the greater the potential to become addicted. For a safer, higher-quality product, look for cannabis that has a verified certificate of analysis—this indicates that the product has been thoroughly checked for contaminants, pesticides, and other harmful materials, and it allows you to view its THC levels as well as other ingredients.

Is hemp-based THC safer than cannabis-based THC?

In short, no. THC is the same if purified in a safe manner for human use, whether it is derived from hemp or cannabis. However, the amount of THC that can be produced from hemp is low—the plant contains less than .3 percent THC—, so most THC is obtained from cannabis.

It is important to understand that even though marijuana may be legal for recreational and medicinal purposes in New York, on the federal level it is still a Schedule 1 drug which means that it is considered to have no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.

However, CBD—which is derived from hemp—is federally legal. There are some who try to get around cannabis’ federal status by selling a hemp-based THC product under the name ‘delta-8-THC.’ In the cannabis plant, it is delta-9-THC that causes the ‘high’ and, large concentrations of the substance can cause mental health issues. While there is not a lot known about delta-8-THC, we do know that it can cause euphoria, though milder than delta-9-THC.

Many companies are marketing delta-8-THC as the safer—and legal—option, but that is not true. For example, since the amount of THC in the hemp plant is low, some manufacturers try to forego the natural process of deriving the substance and use chemicals to artificially increase the amount of delta-8-THC. Additionally, some bad actor companies are faking their certificate of analysis to say that their product is delta-8-THC, when it turns out that it contains delta-9-THC and harmful materials like lead and heavy metals.

Are there any other drawbacks to frequent cannabis use?

In addition to potentially developing an addiction to cannabis, with use of highly potent cannabis products, we see mental health related problems. For example, issues with attention, memory, and cognition. Those are a side effect of chronic cannabis use, and even occasional use can impair motor issues. We also see the risk for psychosis, especially in certain younger people, when they use cannabis.

And, for any drug that is being consumed by smoking, you also incur the risk of pulmonary issues as smoking which is not good for your lungs.

Has marijuana been proven to alleviate any medical conditions?

There are certain synthetic THC products that have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for anti-nausea purposes to help increase the appetite of people going through chemotherapy. The FDA has also approved the use of CBD, in particular Epidiolex^®, for two rare childhood forms of epilepsy.

Other than that, neither cannabis nor CBD have been approved for anything else. But there are a lot of clinical trials currently being done. So we’ll see how those pan out in a few years.

How does legalizing marijuana benefit the medical community?

Legalizing marijuana is a double-edged sword for the medical community. We want to make sure that people are healthy, and any time you take a drug that you most likely do not need that can have negative effects on mental health, that’s not great. But the legalization of marijuana makes it easier for patients to be honest with their doctors about their cannabis use, which overall gives patients better outcomes because a physician will know exactly what their patient is taking and can, therefore, guide their care in a much better way.

Also, for my fellow researchers, the fact that cannabis is no longer illegal in some states makes it easier for us to investigate what may be the benefits and adverse effects of its use for certain disorders. It also allows us to better guide physicians and their patients about how to use cannabis, if they choose to use cannabis.

Yasmin Hurd, PhD, is the Ward-Coleman Chair of Translational Neuroscience and the Director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai. She is currently the principal investigator on a clinical trial of CBD for treating opioid use disorder, a neuroimaging study of CBD’s effects on the human brain, and a study looking at neurodevelopmental effects of cannabis and its epigenetic regulation.

Learn more about the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai

Mount Sinai’s Master’s Commencement—Celebrating Resilience and Achievement

Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Featured, School

Neha B. Pannuri, MPH, one of 147 candidates receiving a degree from Mount Sinai

The Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai conferred 147 master’s degrees in eight programs during a recent ceremony, an interactive virtual event that recapped a year of great challenges and extraordinary achievement. In 2020, the Graduate School added a ninth master’s program, in epidemiology, which will graduate its first cohort in 2022.

Pediatrician, scientist, and activist Mona Hanna-Attisha, MD, MPH, Founder and Director of the Michigan State University-Hurley Children’s Hospital Pediatric Public Health Initiative, received an honorary Doctor of Science degree for playing a pivotal role in helping to uncover the Flint, Michigan, water crisis. Dr. Hanna-Attisha also delivered the commencement address.

Marta Filizola, PhD

Graduate School Dean Marta Filizola, PhD, greeted the graduates and guests, saying, “This pandemic is the latest we have seen, but it is not the first,” and recounting “some of the things that really are unprecedented about our times.” Dr. Filizola is also the Sharon & Frederick A. Klingenstein/Nathan G. Kase, MD Professor of Pharmacological Sciences, and Professor of Neuroscience.

“The world is undeniably more complex today than ever before—interactions of people and nature with sophisticated technologies and human-made systems, taking place in a world of unprecedented population size and unprecedented levels of interdependence,” she said. “This is the reality that presents us with immense challenges.”

Yet, she continued, “What is also unprecedented is the extent of the cooperation, compassion, and teamwork we must bring to bear on these challenges. The breadth of professional training and expertise the world calls for is the reason our graduates today represent such a diversity of degree programs, training areas, and specialty tracks.”

Eric J. Nestler, MD, PhD

Presiding over the ceremony was Eric J. Nestler, MD, PhD, Director of The Friedman Brain Institute, Dean for Academic and Scientific Affairs, and Nash Family Professor of Neuroscience. “The fact that you are all here today is testimony to your fortitude and impressive resilience. Today’s master’s graduates exemplify the full range of expertise that our society has needed to combat and overcome the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said. “We are very proud of your inspiring accomplishments at Mount Sinai, and look forward to all the good that you will do as you embark on your exciting careers.”

Dr. Hanna-Attisha gave a heartfelt speech that drew on her own experience in public health, and she exhorted the graduates to be fearless leaders.

“We need tough graduates like you,” she told them. “Fueled by the power of this place, the engine of knowledge and innovation, you are the light that will illuminate some of our hardest and greatest challenges. You, and especially the field of science, will be on the front lines of some of the most important battlegrounds of society today.”

Mona Hanna-Attisha, MD, MPH

“My story, the Flint, Michigan, story, is a story not unlike our current crisis, about failing to respect science and public health, and failing to protect the most vulnerable among us,” she said. “Remember—somewhere, somehow, sometime in your life—you will have to make a choice. The issue may not be as momentous as a poisoning of a town, but there are Flints everywhere, there are injustices everywhere, there are places and people that will need you to open your eyes and take action and to do the hard things. I urge you to keep your eyes open, to stay vigilant, to remain curious, to take action, to keep doing the hard things for the right reasons.”

Student speaker Meghan Smith, who received a Master of Public Health, spoke of the perseverance and compassion of this unique graduating class, and the hope that they represent.

“At the onset of the pandemic, and this very dark period of time, many people were at a paralyzing low. Incredibly, the students channeled all of these emotions and possessed the strength to step up,” she said, citing the medical- and graduate-student COVID-19 workforce, and other efforts around New York City to support clinical and research efforts. “At one point, it seemed like every student I knew, across all programs, was doing something to help the devastation this nation had witnessed.”

Meghan Smith, MPH

And, as the “country began to recognize the racism and oppression that has existed as part of our society for hundreds of years,” she continued, “powerful social justice movements inspired all of us to make our voices heard.”

With robust optimism, Ms. Smith concluded: “As we embark on our journeys, not knowing what challenges we may face, I know we will all continue to be the people who are willing to step up.”

Why a master’s degree? Read more about the experiences and aspirations of our outstanding graduates and students.

2021 Jacobi Medallion Award Ceremony

Jul 8, 2021 | Alumni, Featured

The Mount Sinai Alumni Association and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai presented accomplished physicians and researchers with the 2021 Jacobi Medallion, one of Mount Sinai’s highest awards, in a virtual ceremony on Tuesday, June 22.

The recipients of the Jacobi Medallion are those physicians and faculty members that have made exceptional contributions to the Mount Sinai Health System, Icahn Mount Sinai, the Mount Sinai Alumni Association, or the fields of medicine or biomedicine.

Watch the ceremony video or read the digital program

These are the recipients of the 2021 Jacobi Medallion:

2021 JACOBI MEDALLION RECIPIENTS: