Mount Sinai Receives Prestigious Honor From American Hospital Association for Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Patient Care
Health System named winner of 2022 Carolyn Boone Lewis Equity of Care Award
Shana Dacon-Pereira, MPH, MBA, a Senior Director in Mount Sinai’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion, accepts the 2022 Carolyn Boone Lewis Equity of Care Award at the American Hospital Association Leadership Summit in San Diego, California.
The Mount Sinai Health System was honored with one of the highest honors in health care diversity, the 2022 Carolyn Boone Lewis Equity of Care Award by the American Hospital Association’s Institute for Diversity and Health Equity on Sunday, July 17.
Mount Sinai was selected as the 2022 Equity of Care Award winner for displaying leadership through its health equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives. Most notably, the Health System’s Road Map for Action is a framework detailing plans to drive change and eliminate health disparities and racism. Part of the framework includes recruiting and training Black and other underrepresented staff and faculty; forming partnerships to accelerate anti-racism and equity efforts throughout all hospitals; and pushing for innovative approaches to address structural racism.
“While we are on a long journey, we appreciate this recognition for our anti-racism efforts and early impact across the Health System,” said Gary Butts, MD, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer for the Mount Sinai Health System and Dean for Diversity Programs, Policy, and Community Affairs at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “This award acknowledges the important commitment and work of our Mount Sinai leaders and system community at large in helping advance this work, and we are grateful to all of you. We are fortunate to be uniquely positioned to build on the longstanding work of the Office for Diversity and Inclusion and our many partners across Icahn Mount Sinai and the Health System.”
During the pandemic, Mount Sinai expanded outreach efforts to address COVID-19-related disparities by performing COVID-19 tests at more than 400 community events throughout New York City and administering more than 8,000 vaccinations across Nassau County. To advance cultural awareness and understanding, Mount Sinai built a robust diversity, equity, and inclusion educational portfolio and included topics such as anti-racism, data and disparities, the administrative talent pipeline, and unconscious bias. In 2021, the Health System launched a two-part course titled “Creating a Brave Space for Conversations About Race,” and created a committee to address anti-Asian bias and racism.
Mount Sinai also designed a data collection method to increase access to and use of race, ethnicity, and language preference data by establishing metrics and dashboards that assess health disparities. It also developed educational modules on the collection of sexual orientation and gender identity and preferred name and gender pronoun data for clinical and patient staff intake.
“We know that to provide equitable and quality care we must use reliable, self-reported patient demographic information to identify differences in outcomes among communities,” said Pamela Abner, MPA, CPXP, Vice President and Chief Diversity Operations Officer for the Mount Sinai Hospital Groups. “Mount Sinai began our data collection efforts in 2016, and now to truly achieve greater equity, we must continue to remove all racist and biased structures that oppress marginalized groups.”
The Carolyn Boone Lewis Equity of Care Award is an annual recognition honoring the outstanding efforts by hospitals and health care systems to promote diversity, inclusion, and health equity—further advancing equity of care to all patients. Ms. Lewis was the first African American and first hospital trustee to chair the American Hospital Association Board. The not-for-profit association brings together health care provider organizations and individuals that are committed to the health improvement of their communities. Novant Health in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and Thomas Jefferson University/Jefferson Health in Philadelphia were also recognized as 2022 honorees.
To learn more about the Mount Sinai Health System Task Force to Address Racism and Road Map for Action, watch the video here.
To listen to AHA Advancing Health Podcast featuring an interview with Shana Dacon-Pereira, click here.
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 2024-2025.
For more information, visit https://www.mountsinai.org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.