• Press Release

Jeffrey D. Sachs, PhD, Joins Mount Sinai for Two-Year Visiting Fellowship

  • New York, NY
  • (September 20, 2016)

The Arnhold Institute for Global Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai today announced it is hosting professor of economics, senior United Nations advisor, bestselling author and sustainable development leader Jeffrey D. Sachs, PhD, on a visiting fellowship through 2018.  
Professor Sachs, widely recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on economic development and the fight against poverty, will be examining how New York City’s largest healthcare system, Mount Sinai, can contribute to the UN’s new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 3: Good Health and Well Being. The SDGs replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which rallied the world around a common agenda to tackle the indignity of poverty.  

“The Arnhold Institute is honored to host Professor Sachs as he shares his expertise on economic, public policy, and public health with the Mount Sinai community as it rises to the challenges the U.S. healthcare industry is facing as it transforms,” said Prabhjot Singh, MD, PhD, Director of the Arnhold Institute for Global Health and Chair, Department of Health System Design and Global Health, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

“The issues facing healthcare right now are not just of a clinical and operational nature, but connect to public policy and macroeconomics as well, and we couldn’t be more proud to have the world’s thought leader on sustainable development to help Mount Sinai leverage broader thinking to advance our work effectively,” said Dr. Singh, who also co-founded the One Million Community Health Worker Campaign with Jeffrey Sachs, which is an initiative of the African Union and UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

In his new role at Mount Sinai, Professor Sachs will provide insights from his work in international economic development into the challenges of achieving universal health coverage amidst the ongoing implementation of the Affordable Care Act. He will be hosting and joining seminars throughout his time at Mount Sinai and collaborate directly with the Department of Health System Design and Global Health, Mount Sinai Health Partners, and the Department of Population Health Science and Policy. Recently, Professor Sachs led a team of Mount Sinai executives to Ghana to learn how Ghana is implementing a national electronic health system.

“For decades, Jeffrey Sachs has been committed to helping populations around the world escape from poverty and fight high disease burdens through strengthened primary health systems,” said Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and President for Academic Affairs for the Health System. “His pioneering ideas on investing in health to break the poverty trap have been widely applied in Africa and beyond, and it is our hope to benefit from his expertise as we expand and improve our models of care for vulnerable and underserved patients in the communities we serve.”

“We are honored to welcome Jeffrey Sachs to Mount Sinai, knowing that he brings unparalleled expertise in designing solutions to some of the most complex challenges in providing healthcare to the world’s most vulnerable populations,” said Niyum Gandhi, chief population health officer for the Mount Sinai Health System.

"Whether in New York City or globally, poverty should not be a barrier to anyone's ability to obtain quality health care," said Jeffrey D. Sachs, "I commend Mount Sinai's commitment to designing next-generation healthcare models, devising cost-effective business solutions to accelerate them, and using pioneering data-driven methods and new technologies to scale them. I greatly look forward to collaborating with Dr. Prabhjot Singh and his team, as well as with the many innovators across the Mount Sinai Health System who are committed to advancing health in underserved populations and eliminating disparities in quality and access to care."

Professor Sachs served as the Director of the Earth Institute from 2002 to 2016. He was appointed University Professor at Columbia University in 2016, and also serves as Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the Sustainable Development Goals, and previously advised both UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals. For more than thirty years he has advised dozens of heads of state and governments on economic strategy, in the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

Prior to joining Columbia, Sachs spent over twenty years as a professor at Harvard University, most recently as the Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade. A native of Detroit, Michigan, Sachs received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard.

About the Mount Sinai Health System

Mount Sinai Health System is one of the largest academic medical systems in the New York metro area, with 48,000 employees working across eight hospitals, more than 400 outpatient practices, more than 600 research and clinical labs, a school of nursing, and a leading school of medicine and graduate education. Mount Sinai advances health for all people, everywhere, by taking on the most complex health care challenges of our time—discovering and applying new scientific learning and knowledge; developing safer, more effective treatments; educating the next generation of medical leaders and innovators; and supporting local communities by delivering high-quality care to all who need it.

Through the integration of its hospitals, labs, and schools, Mount Sinai offers comprehensive health care solutions from birth through geriatrics, leveraging innovative approaches such as artificial intelligence and informatics while keeping patients’ medical and emotional needs at the center of all treatment. The Health System includes approximately 9,000 primary and specialty care physicians and 11 free-standing joint-venture centers throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida. Hospitals within the System are consistently ranked by Newsweek’s® “The World’s Best Smart Hospitals, Best in State Hospitals, World Best Hospitals and Best Specialty Hospitals” and by U.S. News & World Report's® “Best Hospitals” and “Best Children’s Hospitals.” The Mount Sinai Hospital is on the U.S. News & World Report® “Best Hospitals” Honor Roll for 2023-2024.

For more information, visit https://www.mountsinai.org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

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