In late September, Rachel Vreeman, MD, MS, Chair of the Department of Health System Design and Global Health at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Brendan G. Carr, MD, MS, Chief Executive Officer and Professor and Kenneth L. Davis Distinguished Chair of the Mount Sinai Health System, appeared with the President of Guyana and the Prime Minister of Nepal during the UN General Assembly and the Concordia Summit. Under the direction of Dr. Vreeman, Mount Sinai’s Arnhold Institute for Global Health partners with both countries’ health systems via strategic partnerships, including faculty, staff, medical student and resident exchange opportunities; and joint scientific research and quality improvement projects.
Spotlight on Guyana
In July 2022, the President of Guyana, His Excellency Dr. Irfaan Ali, announced a new national health care initiative in collaboration with the Mount Sinai Health System and Hess Corporation to improve the quality of and access to health care for the people of Guyana. Working with the government of Guyana, the Mount Sinai team partners to develop high quality primary care, specialized services in cardiology and oncology, and significant improvements at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation.
The work is funded jointly by the Government of Guyana and by the Hess Corporation as an extension of Mount Sinai Trustee John Hess’s philanthropic commitment to Mount Sinai. As Mr. Hess shared at the September 24th Concordia Summit, his company has a core value of social responsibility: “Making a positive social impact on the communities where we do business is something that differentiates us. It’s not just about building an economic legacy, but building a social legacy.”
Thus fueled by philanthropy, the Arnhold Institute partners directly with the Guyanese Ministry of Health and the Hess Corporation to offer vision and dental screening, treat diabetes and high blood pressure, and provide child health screenings. Facing a recent nursing shortage, the Arnhold Institute successfully increased the number of Guyanese nursing students from 400 to 1,000 by creating a hybrid learning program that includes distance learning to maximize flexibility.
The Hess family has a long-standing relationship with Mount Sinai dating back to Leon Hess’s service as a Trustee from 1966 until his death in 1999. John Hess has philanthropically supported many areas across the Health System, perhaps most notably with the lead gift to create the Leon and Norma Hess Center for Science and Medicine, which is named for his parents’ generosity and commitment to Mount Sinai and which opened in 2012 as the hub of Mount Sinai’s medical research enterprise. Mr. Hess understands how an organization like Mount Sinai can have multiple dimensions of impact, in New York City and beyond: “This is a model for developing countries where business, the government, and a health care system can work together to modernize and bring the standards of health care up in a developing country.”
Dr. Vreeman agrees on the importance of “bringing together an academic health system where we have the resources of research and clinicians, and an understanding of health systems, with a truly visionary government partner, and a corporate partner who’s willing to put forward everything that it takes.”
“It’s not only how do we build new hospitals and modernize our hospitals and make sure that we have top of the line equipment, but to also say we need to invest in primary care. We need to make sure that every child, no matter where they live in Guyana, receives a comprehensive health evaluation; that we need to put in place the data systems, the digital health infrastructure. That every single citizen—no matter how hard to reach in the region in which they live—starts to be able to access the health system in their community. They’re investing in the health workforce and investing for the next generation.”
Mount Sinai’s work in Guyana is an entirely philanthropically supported movement paid for by the Guyanese government, the Hess Corporation, and research grants from the National Institutes of Health and others. Philanthropy enabling this program will, in President Ali’s words, “ensure that we grow a healthy population… It is much more than health care provision. It is building a world-class ecosystem to support health care provision.”
Rachel Vreeman, MD, MS, Chair of the Department of Health System Design and Global Health at Icahn Mount Sinai; John B. Hess, Chief Executive Officer of Hess Corporation and Trustee of the Mount Sinai Health System; His Excellency Dr. Irfaan Ali, President of Guyana; Brendan G. Carr, MD, MS, Chief Executive Officer and Professor and Kenneth L. Davis Distinguished Chair of the Mount Sinai Health System.
Spotlight on Nepal
In 2022, the Arnhold Institute announced a multi-year agreement with the Kathmandu University School of Medical Sciences and Dhulikhel Hospital in Nepal to advance clinical education, training, research, and care. The program focuses on strategic priorities including non-communicable diseases, subspecialty care development, women’s and child health, adolescent health, and the advancement of research and education programs. It engages the Academic Model Providing Access to Health (AMPATH) Consortium, a global network of 15 universities and academic health centers that aims to improve health care in underserved communities.
In September 2024, during UN week, Mount Sinai hosted the Rt. Honorable Prime Minister Mr. K.P. Sharma Oli of Nepal. As Dr. Rachel Vreeman said on the occasion, “we will continue to transform health both for the area of Nepal in which we are working as well as here at Mount Sinai.”
In New York, Mount Sinai has a significant population of Nepalese and Guyanese diaspora students and employees. The Elmhurst Hospital Center, located in western Queens, is a major teaching affiliate of Icahn Mount Sinai and treats more Nepalese patients than any other hospital in America. Dr. Carr added to Rt. Honorable Prime Minister Oli, “The relationship with you in Nepal strengthens our knowledge about how to take meaningful care of patients at Elmhurst in New York.”
As the Rt. Honorable Prime Minister Oli was set to return home to Nepal, heavy rainfall in central Nepal, whose population is approximately 2.2 million, triggered massive flooding and landslides. More than 200 people were killed, with thousands more displaced. The Mount Sinai AMPATH Nepal program moved quickly into action, calling for our donor community to support their disaster relief efforts, and the community responded with an outpouring of gifts totaling almost $10,000. Donations made through the Arnhold Institute and AMPATH Nepal through October 31st directly supported the humanitarian response led by our partners at Dhulikhel Hospital–one of the key coordinating centers for the Government’s emergency relief efforts in Bagmati Province. Donations to the program made after that date support the AMPATH program’s continuing work in Nepal. Mount Sinai’s teams in Nepal continue to help with emergency response operations, humanitarian relief, and rebuilding efforts alongside Dhulikhel Hospital.
From celebrating the partnership with world leaders during UN Week in New York City, to mobilizing emergency response on the ground in Nepal, this fall has been a time of celebration, tragedy, and unity for the program.
The Arnhold Institute for Global Health was founded in 2014 with support from The Mulago Foundation and the Arnhold Foundation, which advocates for health care, the environment, education, and international affairs. Through partnerships, the Institute has supported more than 52,000 local health care providers. Collectively, these partnerships have supported health care for 12.5 million people across three continents.