Carolyn Rowan focused her attention on women’s health when she realized she could help future generations of women to experience a lifetime of well-being in mind and body. Thus the vision for the Rowan Women’s Health Center at Mount Sinai emerged, with plans to open in 2025 on the northwest corner of 99th Street and Madison Avenue in the heart of the Upper East Side. The Rowan Center will elevate women’s health care to a level of luxury by bringing together women’s health services at a single location—a design element Rowan believes is central to ensuring women receive care and attention of the highest quality.
“Imagine a wellness center for women where you know you’re getting the best care, where all of the best doctors are focused on you and every interaction comes from a place of caring,” says Rowan, who recently made a transformational gift to establish the Rowan Center. “I was born at Mount Sinai, my children were born at Mount Sinai, and I feel so fortunate to be able to do this with them.”
Rowan joined Mount Sinai’s Board of Trustees in 2023, crediting the decision to her lifelong fascination with health care, medicine, and wellness. That passion shows in her motivation to educate women from a young age on how to optimally care for their bodies. A philosophy of prevention will be primary to the Rowan Center and made possible in part through research, one of the foundational pillars on which Mount Sinai stands. The Blavatnik Family Women’s Health Research Institute and the newly established Women’s Biomedical Research Institute conduct basic and translational research specific to the biology of women’s health across the lifespan, and each will directly inform care at the Rowan Center.
Rowan envisions a colocation of providers who are at the top of their practice in every area of women’s health, making the Rowan Center a premier destination for the women of New York City. Not only will the convenience of accessing multiple services at the same hospital lower barriers to care, but such proximity will naturally empower provider collaboration, improving health outcomes while giving every patient certainty that care is centered on them. A range of women’s health services will be available at the 99th and Madison location, and the Rowan Center will anchor additional women’s health services provided across the Mount Sinai Health System, working intimately with the Raquel and Jaime Gilinski Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science at Mount Sinai to deliver the highest level of patient-centered care.
Moreover, Rowan is enthusiastic about an infusion of integrative medicine that will give patients access to services that are typically spread across disparate offices, if available at all. By bridging practices with roots in Western as well as Eastern systems, from precision diagnostic testing, bone density testing, and pelvic floor physical therapy to acupuncture, massage, and use of medicinal herbs, the Rowan Center will expand the range of care options such that care can be personalized to an individual patient at any stage of life.
The Rowan Center will offer specialized menopause services attuned to the needs of those in midlife, with experts proactively providing care that keeps a woman feeling her best in the years before, during, and after menopause. Menopause “is not a sexy subject,” Rowan acknowledges, and so “it has been a largely dark conversation that’s recently come to light. Mount Sinai can be the foremost in that space.”
Tying it all together will be a team of dedicated patient navigators, who will be available to help patients schedule appointments as well as manage coordination of care for those following more complex treatment plans.
Rowan hopes that her gift to establish the Rowan Center will give women “something that’s just for them,” a place where they will be heard, treated compassionately, and receive recommendations specific to the female body, whether for screenings, self-care, or exercise. Most of all, she hopes to give women peace of mind, knowing they are in a place designed to help them be healthy.
“It’s great to have something you envision come to life…and I’m only one small piece. Caring faculty and staff will be the superstars who make this happen.”