BRONX, N.Y., Oct. 20, 2020 /PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE/ — Montefiore Health System and Albert Einstein College of Medicine have created the Family Resiliency Program to provide counseling and, in some cases, financial support to New York City and lower Hudson Valley families who have lost a loved one to COVID-19.

With funding from Robin Hood and Tapestry Inc.’s Coach Foundation, eligible families must be referred to the program by a doctor, nurse, social worker, or other clinician and then screened by Montefiore staff to receive $2,000 of financial support for food, shelter, utilities or child care. 

Families eligible for a referral must meet the following criteria:

• Have lost a loved one to COVID-19 who was an income earner or caregiver in a household. This includes the death of a household member who provided childcare or an adult whose paycheck covered family bills.
• Have a child or young adult under age 26 in the household.
• Live in New York City or lower Hudson Valley.
• Are struggling to pay basic expenses such as housing, food, utilities or child care.

Hundreds of families in New York City and the lower Hudson Valley will benefit from the $700,000 fund.

All families referred to the program, including those that do not meet the criteria to qualify for cash assistance, will be given the opportunity to work with a social worker to identify additional appropriate benefits through other federal and state programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

“Montefiore’s work does not just take place in doctors’ offices and hospitals; our mission is to help our communities, like the Bronx, that experienced the wrath of COVID-19, which exacerbated decades of health inequities and economic challenges,” said Anna Flattau, M.D., associate professor and vice chair for Clinical Services, Department of Family and Social Medicine, at Montefiore and Einstein. “This program will provide temporary assistance to alleviate the immediate financial concerns that families coping with tremendous trauma and grief are facing, while they apply for other benefits and programs.”

“The doctors and social workers at Montefiore are committed to finding innovative ways to help patients and their families who face extreme challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Adam Sirois, director of Institutional Giving, at Montefiore. “We’re grateful to have partners like Robin Hood and the Coach Foundation who helped us move swiftly to support families at a time of personal loss and financial anxiety.”

If you’re a medical professional looking to refer a family to the program, please email [email protected]. To donate or become a partner, please visit https://www.montefiore.org/family-social-medicine. 

About Montefiore Health System 

Montefiore Health System is one of New York’s premier academic health systems and is a recognized leader in providing exceptional quality and personalized, accountable care to approximately three million people in communities across the Bronx, Westchester and the Hudson Valley. It is comprised of 10 hospitals, including the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, Burke Rehabilitation Hospital and more than 200 outpatient ambulatory care sites. The advanced clinical and translational research at its medical school, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, directly informs patient care and improves outcomes. From the Montefiore-Einstein Centers of Excellence in cancer, cardiology and vascular care, pediatrics, and transplantation, to its preeminent school-based health program, Montefiore is a fully integrated healthcare delivery system providing coordinated, comprehensive care to patients and their families. For more information please visit www.montefiore.org. Follow us on Twitter and view us on Facebook and YouTube.

About Albert Einstein College of Medicine 

Albert Einstein College of Medicine is one of the nation’s premier centers for research, medical education and clinical investigation. During the 2019-20 academic year, Einstein is home to 724 M.D. students, 158 Ph.D. students, 106 students in the combined M.D./Ph.D. program, and 265 postdoctoral research fellows. The College of Medicine has more than 1,800 full-time faculty members located on the main campus and at its clinical affiliates. In 2019, Einstein received more than $178 million in awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This includes the funding of major research centers at Einstein in aging, intellectual development disorders, diabetes, cancer, clinical and translational research, liver disease, and AIDS. Other areas where the College of Medicine is concentrating its efforts include developmental brain research, neuroscience, cardiac disease, and initiatives to reduce and eliminate ethnic and racial health disparities. Its partnership with Montefiore, the University Hospital and academic medical center for Einstein, advances clinical and translational research to accelerate the pace at which new discoveries become the treatments and therapies that benefit patients. Einstein runs one of the largest residency and fellowship training programs in the medical and dental professions in the United States through Montefiore and an affiliation network involving hospitals and medical centers in the Bronx, Brooklyn and on Long Island. For more information, please visit www.einstein.yu.edu, read our blog, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and view us on YouTube. 

About Robin Hood

Founded in 1988, Robin Hood finds, fuels, and creates the most impactful and scalable solutions lifting families out of poverty in New York City, with models that can work across the country. Robin Hood invests nearly $120 million annually to provide legal services, housing, meals, workforce development training, education programs, and more to families in poverty in New York City. Robin Hood tracks every program with rigorous metrics, and since Robin Hood’s Board of Directors covers all overhead, 100 percent of every donation goes directly to the poverty fight. Learn more at www.robinhood.org and follow Robin Hood on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

About Tapestry Inc. and the Coach Foundation

Tapestry, Inc. is a New York-based house of modern luxury lifestyle brands. The Company’s portfolio includes Coach, Kate Spade and Stuart Weitzman. Founded in 2008, the Coach Foundation brings Coach’s philanthropic initiatives to life. To date it has granted more than $50 million to nonprofit partners all over the world.  For more information on Coach’s philanthropic initiatives, please visit https://www.coach.com/dreamitreal.

Follow us on Twitter: @MontefioreNYC 

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SOURCE Montefiore Health System

HOUSTON, Oct. 20, 2020 /PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE/ — Neighbors Emergency Centers in Baytown, Crosby, Kingwood, and Porter are now in-network with BlueCross BlueShield (BCBS) of Texas, another benefit of the freestanding emergency rooms’ affiliation with Altus Baytown Hospital. The outpatient emergency department affiliation has allowed Neighbors Emergency Center to also go in-network with Cigna and Aetna over the last year, as well as allowing the locations to accept Medicare.

The locations now accepting BlueCross BlueShield are:

Neighbors Emergency Center – Baytown: 6051 Garth Rd.
Neighbors Emergency Center – Crosby: 14120 FM 2100
Neighbors Emergency Center – Kingwood: 1120 Kingwood Dr.
Neighbors Emergency Center – Porter: 22678 Hwy. 59

The new insurance network agreements do not extend to the Pearland or Pasadena Neighbors Emergency Center locations.

About Neighbors Emergency Center:
Neighbors Emergency Center provides extraordinary ER care through full-service 24-hour emergency rooms with short wait times, board-certified ER physicians, and private exam rooms. Services include X-Ray, CT, Ultrasound, laboratory, IV Fluids and medications, and all adult and pediatric emergency care. Neighbors Emergency Center has six Houston-area locations in Porter, Kingwood, Crosby, Baytown, Pasadena, and Pearland. For more information visit https://www.nec24.com

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SOURCE Neighbors Emergency Center

STANFORD, Calif., Oct. 20, 2020 /PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE/ — The Stanford University School of Medicine today announced the launch of the Community Alliance to Test Coronavirus at Home (CATCH) Study, an effort that seeks to estimate the true population prevalence of COVID-19 across the 8.5 million population of the greater San Francisco Bay Area, and ultimately aid in the effort to reopen schools, workplaces and communities.

The CATCH Study is now seeking participants. A key aim of the CATCH Study is to scale a simple, safe, convenient, and population-scale early diagnostic system to help stop further undetected spread of COVID-19. CATCH utilizes online surveys and home delivered self-collection kits that are able to be rapidly deployed to carry out remote testing in a broad and representative sample of the population, including those underserved and vulnerable populations that might otherwise not be reached or tested. The study is enabled by the Vera Cloud Testing Platform including its novel Vera Home Test Kit, a gentle nasal swab self-collection kit that can be delivered directly to the homes of study participants by existing couriers and package delivery services.

There is no cost to CATCH Study participation, and all residents in the San Francisco Bay Area are welcome to enroll. Every participant joins online, reports their symptoms and exposures to COVID-19 daily, and may also be offered a home test kit at no cost upon reporting. If accepted, within 24 hours a home test kit will be delivered safely and conveniently by express courier to their home, where they can self-collect a sample, which is then delivered to the Stanford Health Care laboratory and tested for SARS-CoV-2 infection. All tested participants are informed of their results privately and securely online via their personal password-protected account within the CATCH website. The unique approach removes any requirement to leave home or shelter-in-place. 

The study is being led by Stanford Medicine researchers Yvonne Maldonado, MD, professor of pediatric infectious diseases and of health research and policy, Lorene Nelson, MD, associate professor of health research and policy, as well as Dr. Stephen Quake, professor of bioengineering and of applied physics and co-president of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub.

“We encourage as many Bay Area residents as possible to sign-up for the CATCH Study to help increase our knowledge of a virus that has had significant impacts on our communities,” said Dr. Maldonado. “Our main objective is to learn where and how the virus is spreading — whether people are displaying symptoms or not — and which communities are most vulnerable. These insights will help our scientists and local public officials gain a deeper understanding of the distribution of COVID-19 throughout the greater San Francisco Bay Area so that they can stop its spread.”

With the effects of COVID-19 disproportionately affecting minority and vulnerable communities throughout the country, and specifically in the Bay Area, one of the key intentions of the study is to address inequities in testing by researching underserved populations. The testing kits will provide a convenient, no-cost, rapid home-based option for many in these communities who have difficulty accessing facility-based testing.

All San Francisco Bay Area Residents residing in the following counties can sign-up for the CATCH Study as long as they are at least 18 years of age or older, including those with or without symptoms. All CATCH Study participation is free of charge and does not require health insurance.

The researchers intend to offer home test kits each day to a portion of all CATCH participants who reported the previous day, carefully selecting participants both with and without symptoms, in order to best represent our diverse population. In addition, a pre-selected and representative group of residents will also receive direct mailings beginning October 20, 2020 on how to become CATCH participants. These mailings include a unique personal code, allowing their automatic selection for home testing upon joining the study.

Whenever a CATCH Study participant is selected for testing, a Vera Home Test Kit will be sent to the participant, generally arriving the same day or early the next morning. Each kit includes a gentle nasal swab, which requires participants to swipe only the inside of their nostrils, making it a less invasive process than other health care facility-based tests that require deeper access through the nose. Results will be made available within 24 hours of receipt by the Stanford laboratory. Participants can view their results online via their own private dashboard for the study.

The Vera Cloud Testing Platform and Home Test Kits were created by Stanford in collaboration with several other institutions, including the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub and Microsoft, and aim to increase testing capacity for COVID-19 at local, state and national levels. Stanford also intends to make the platform available under non-commercial terms to academic institutions, public health departments, laboratory providers and other organizations interested in offering expansive at home testing. The study is funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, an independent, nonprofit medical research center that brings together physicians, scientists and engineers from Stanford University, the University of California, San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley to drive discovery and encourage collaborative science.

Residents interested in learning more about the CATCH Study and how they can participate can visit https://catchstudy.stanford.edu/ or call (833) 971-2468.

About Stanford University School of Medicine
The Stanford University School of Medicine consistently ranks among the nation’s top medical schools, integrating research, medical education, patient care and community service. For more news about the school, please visit http://med.stanford.edu/school.html. The medical school is part of Stanford Medicine, which includes Stanford Health Care and Stanford Children’s Health. For information about all three, please visit http://med.stanford.edu.

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SOURCE Stanford Medicine CATCH Study

NEW YORK, Oct. 19, 2020 /PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE/ — The National Kidney Foundation (NKF) national governing Board of Directors has named nephrologist Dr. Sylvia E. Rosas of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston as the president-elect, with a term as president to begin in October 2022.

“I would like to thank the NKF leadership for the opportunity to advocate for the 37 million adults in the U.S. affected by kidney disease,” Dr. Rosas said. “I look forward to working with [NKF] Chief Executive Officer Kevin Longino, the current [NKF] President Dr. Paul Palevsky, and the staff on these exciting times for kidney health and advocacy. The Advancing American Kidney Health initiative will transform nephrology care in our nation, and NKF will be present in order to advocate for our patients and kidney professionals.”

Dr. Rosas is a nephrologist and epidemiologist at the Joslin Diabetes Center, the Director of the Latino Kidney Clinic, an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a nephrologist at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

“I am thrilled that Dr. Sylvia Rosas is joining the NKF Board as president-elect,” Dr. Palevsky said. “I have known Dr. Rosas for many years and have had the privilege to collaborate with her in ongoing research. She is a passionate advocate for her patients and for all patients with kidney disease. I look forward to her joining the national leadership of the NKF in improving the lives of kidney patients and increasing awareness of kidney disease among the one-third of the adult population who are at risk of developing it,” said Dr. Palevsky, MD, current NKF President.

Dr. Rosas completed her Internal Medicine training at Michael Reese Hospital/University of Illinois at Chicago. She obtained clinical nephrology training and a master’s in clinical epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania. She also completed the Wharton Management Program. She has been a nephrologist for 21 years.

Dr. Rosas’s primary research focus is on the epidemiology of metabolic and cardiovascular disease complications in patients with kidney disease, particularly diabetic kidney disease. She has also evaluated health disparities in individuals with kidney disease, particularly in those of Hispanic or Latino background.  She grew up in Puerto Rico and lived in Bogota, Colombia, as a teenager and medical school student.

“NKF is honored to have Dr. Rosas join the Board of Directors as the President-Elect,” said Anthony E. Tuggle, Chair of the NKF Board of Directors and a kidney transplant recipient. “We are especially fortunate at this time of intersection between kidney disease, the pandemic, and racial inequality in healthcare to have a nephrologist who is also an epidemiologist and diversity advocate, in our leadership. I want to thank Dr. Rosas for giving her talents to NKF in this critical way.”

“During my term as president, I would like to continue to focus on public awareness of kidney disease, particularly, diabetic kidney disease, the most important cause of kidney disease worldwide,” Dr. Rosas said. “I have been an advocate for eliminating barriers to kidney donation as well as reducing organ discards. In addition, there are significant disparities in both who is at risk for developing kidney disease and how treatment is applied.

“I plan to continue advancing these areas I have been dedicated to my entire career, to support programs that address and find solutions for these health disparities,” she said. “In addition, I will continue to work to increase gender and racial diversity in the healthcare field.”

Dr. Rosas is the clinical center leader in the NIDDK-funded multicenter APOL1 Long-term Kidney Transplantation Outcomes Network (APOLLO) that evaluates the role of the APOL1 gene in kidney transplant outcomes.  She is also the leader for the Kidney Precision Medicine Program (KPMP) Chronic Kidney Disease recruitment site at Joslin Diabetes Center. KPMP aims to ethically obtain and evaluate human kidney biopsies in order to create a kidney tissue atlas, define disease subgroups, and identify critical cells, pathways, and targets for novel therapies.

She has received numerous awards including the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) of New England Physician of the Year in 2017 and National Hispanic Medical Association Fellow of the Year Award. She has been a long-time volunteer with NKF, including as a member of the NKF Spring Clinical Meetings planning committee, a judge at the Young Investigator Forum, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board at NKF.

On a local level, she has been a member of the medical board of the NKF New England chapter. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology and the Advances of Chronic Kidney Disease Journal.

Dr. Rosas served as the Chair of the Minority Affairs Committee of the Organ Procurement and Transplant Network/United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). Dr. Rosas has been the secretary for Women in Nephrology as well as Program Committee Chair for the NIDDK Network for Minority Health Research Investigators.

Dr. Rosas and her family live in Newton, MA, outside of Boston. She is married and has two teen-age children.

Kidney Disease Facts
In the United States, 37 million adults are estimated to have chronic kidney disease—and approximately 90 percent don’t know they have it.  1 in 3 adults in the U.S. are at risk for chronic kidney disease.  Risk factors for kidney disease include: diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, and family history. People of Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian American, or Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander descent are at increased risk for developing the disease. Blacks or African Americans are almost 4 times more likely than White Americans to have kidney failure.  Hispanics are 1.3 times more likely than non-Hispanics to have kidney failure.

About the National Kidney Foundation
The National Kidney Foundation (NKF) is the largest, most comprehensive, and longstanding patient-centric organization dedicated to the awareness, prevention, and treatment of kidney disease in the U.S. For more information about NKF, visit www.kidney.org.

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www.kidney.org

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SOURCE National Kidney Foundation