2022 Power Players in Health Care

Wendy Stark joined Planned Parenthood of Greater New York as president and CEO in October 2022. A lifelong champion for equitable access to sexual and reproductive health care, Wendy has nearly 30 years of leadership and advocacy experience in the health care space. In her previous position as executive director at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, Wendy was instrumental in the growth of the organization, doubling its health care capacity, and expanding its geographical presence.

Why did you decide to pursue a career in health care?
Growing up in Las Vegas, I was raised in a family that respected and valued the right to bodily autonomy in all its forms and instilled in me the importance of always striving to build a world in which that right is true for everyone. My career has been focused on creating access to affirming health care as a human right with a north star of health equity and justice.

What is the biggest challenge currently facing New York’s health care system?
There are New Yorkers who still aren’t able to access sexual and reproductive care due to abortion deserts, economic challenges, or other structural barriers. Meanwhile, following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, New York has become an abortion access state for people traveling from states hostile toward reproductive health care. We must do everything in our power to ensure that abortion remains legal and equitably accessible to every person who seeks this essential health service.

How can New York State ensure access to affordable health care?
Providing equitable access to health care for all New Yorkers will require cross-sector collaboration and partnership across public and private stakeholders. In addition to universal health care coverage, we need affordable childcare options to support parents; improvement of care options for LGBTQ+ communities; and a fair living wage, just to name a few.

What does the future of health care look like?
We are facing an abortion access crisis in this country. I remain optimistic that together we can meet the moment and continue providing high-quality sexual and reproductive health care to New Yorkers while expanding services to support those who come to us from out-of-state to seek help. The future of health care is affordable access to affirming care when, where, and how people need it.

Serving as commissioner of the New York State Office of Mental Health since 2014, Dr. Ann Sullivan has guided the expansion of community-based treatment, reinvesting over $100 million in community services and enabling individuals living with serious mental illness to live successfully in their community. Major initiatives she has overseen include integrating physical, mental health, and substance use in care and treatment; integrating prevention, wellness and the social determinants of health in service delivery; reducing disparities in care; and increasing access to care across the lifespan.

Why did you decide to pursue a career in health care?
In medical school I enjoyed understanding and working with individuals living with serious mental illness, partnering with them to achieve their hopes and dreams. A career in public psychiatry was a perfect choice.

What is the biggest challenge currently facing New York’s health care system?
Public behavioral health care in New York State faces four major challenges — increasing prevention for all ages in our system of care, providing access to effective quality services, ensuring equity and inclusion in all we do, and recruiting and retaining a talented workforce. OMH has numerous initiatives to address these challenges including developing a statewide crisis response system linked to the new mental health crisis line 988.

How can New York State ensure access to affordable health care?
OMH’s strategy follows the “Triple Aim.” First: achieve better public health by emphasizing prevention, maximizing wellness, effective monitoring, and obtaining data on the health needs of the people we serve. Second: better care and treatment for each patient, focusing on patient choice, integrated and coordinated care, and increasing engagement with provider staff. Third: lower cost through efficient and effective use of resources, emphasis on prevention and wellness, and focusing on community and home-based services.

What does the future of health care look like?
The future offers opportunity as well as challenges. Technology offers the opportunity to reach more individuals in need of mental health services and to offer new and innovative prevention and treatment strategies. Since the pandemic, there is an increased awareness of the mental health needs we all have, and the importance of ensuring access to prevention and services for all New Yorkers, especially our youth who have experienced an unprecedented life disruption during this pandemic.

Founded by Chairman Dr. Ramon Tallaj in 2015, SOMOS Community Care is a nonprofit, diverse, physician-led network of 2,500 health care providers serving 1 million Medicaid and Medicare beneficiaries throughout New York City. Under Dr. Tallaj’s leadership, SOMOS has saved the state $336 million through the New York State Medicaid program. SOMOS was created with the goal to change health care in America by focusing on equity, affordability, and the right to quality, preventative health care. Dr. Tallaj led his SOMOS network through the darkest days of the pandemic by testing over 1 million people, vaccinating  2 million New Yorkers against COVID-19, and feeding over 2 million meals to food-insecure neighbors in local churches, schools, public housing, and Yankee Stadium. Dr. Tallaj was appointed as the co-chairman of New York City Mayor Eric Adam’s COVID-19 Recovery Roundtable and Health Equity Task Force. Recently, Dr, Tallaj received an Emmy Award for a documentary chronicling SOMOS’ efforts during the pandemic, titled “Doctor Tallaj: The Hispanic Who Faced COVID-19 in New York.”

Gary G. Terrinoni was named president and CEO of The Brooklyn Hospital Center in 2015. He oversees an organization resolute in honoring its 175+ year history in Downtown Brooklyn, while it works to position itself as a modern, independent, and indispensable health care provider for the one million people in North Central Brooklyn.

During his tenure, he has overseen important initiatives, including: significant improvements in quality standards; a Center for Critical Care Services (which was instrumental in the hospital’s heroic response to the COVID-19 surge in 2020); the launch of the Epic electronic medical record throughout the ambulatory care network; the renovation of the Emergency Department; the selling of the outdated Maynard Building, allowing faculty practices to move to the brand-new, state-of-the-art Physicians Pavilion; the opening of The Brooklyn Cancer Center in partnership with New York Cancer & Blood Specialists.

Mr. Terrinoni was formerly executive vice president of administration and chief financial officer of Kennedy Health System in Voorhees, New Jersey.

Why did you decide to pursue a career in health care?
I was exposed to health care early in my career and it fit my values of giving back to the community.

What is the biggest challenge currently facing New York’s health care system?
Equity in care caused by inequity in reimbursement.

How can New York State ensure access to affordable health care?
Make it so that all providers have to share in treating the underserved.

What does the future of health care look like?
Not very encouraging due to rising costs and a lack of equitable system to deliver care.

Sheila Thorne has spent more than two decades designing health education campaigns for the top 50 pharmaceutical companies. She has worked throughout North America, Western Europe, and Latin America with a focus on communities of color. She has lectured on health equity at several universities and has given over 250 keynote presentations and workshops on cultural competency in health care delivery. Sheila is known for her unique ability to galvanize communities of color around health and social justice issues.

James S. Tisch is president and chief executive officer of Loews Corporation. He serves as co-chair of the Board of Trustees for the Mount Sinai Health System, and is on the Board of Directors of the New York Public Library. Mr. Tisch is a member of the Board of Directors of CNA Financial Corporation and of Loews Corporation. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Why did you decide to pursue a career in health care?
While I don’t have a career in health care, I have been on the board of the Mount Sinai Health System for over 30 years, and am deeply interested in its mission. It is fascinating and rewarding to be involved in an institution that focuses on the discovery of new medicines, the education of future doctors, and the care and treatment of sick patients.

What is the biggest challenge currently facing New York’s health care system?
The biggest challenge facing New York’s health care system is hospital finance. Medicaid reimbursements do not pay nearly enough for hospitals to survive nor to improve their facilities. After years of underinvestment, hospitals can fall hopelessly behind in terms of the quality of their facilities, driving away patients that might have a choice of which hospital to visit. The state needs to figure out how to deal with this critical problem.

How can New York State ensure access to affordable health care?
At Mount Sinai, we believe we have a moral obligation to drive health care reform and we’re committed to improving health care efficiency. We support reforms that improve coordinated, integrated, and patient-centered care. We do this by working with elected leaders who shape policy and community stakeholders who can drive change and identify solutions. As a result, we provide care for one of the most diverse populations in the world.

What does the future of health care look like?
In many ways, the future of health care is already happening at Mount Sinai. We’re advancing artificial intelligence to transform health care and provide patient care through pioneering innovations and technologies. We’re applying knowledge to treatment and practice to personalized care for each patient. We’re building innovation centers that accelerate the development and commercialization of innovative technologies. And we’re training and recruiting the brightest minds, investing in leading-edge technology, and creating crucial infrastructure.

Dennis Trainor is vice president of CWA District One, representing 140,000 workers across New York, New Jersey, and New England. With thousands of health care workers among CWA’s ranks, Dennis has advocated tirelessly during his tenure for legislation to increase quality patient care and protect health care workers, playing an instrumental role in shaping New York’s recent Clinical Staffing Committee Law. Dennis also spearheaded successful strikes alongside union members, including the month-long strike at Buffalo’s Mercy Hospital in October 2021, resulting in ironclad safe staffing ratios that prioritize patient care and worker safety.

What is the biggest challenge currently facing New York’s health care system?
Amid a nationwide nursing shortage, understaffed and underfunded hospitals are struggling to provide quality care. Without investing in health care workers, after their sacrifices during the pandemic, this staffing crisis will continue to breed a cycle of burnout, attrition, and turnover. New York has made progress in ensuring safe staffing ratios in our hospitals, but we must do more to improve conditions for health care workers in order to combat the worker shortage in the health care field.

What does the future of health care look like?
To deliver equitable, safe, effective health care to every community, New York hospitals must deliver on the promise of safe staffing. That means ensuring current health care workers remain in these critical jobs, and that health care becomes an attractive field to work in again. Unfortunately, too many nurses feel undervalued and overworked. The future of health care will require additional investment and rebuilding of the workforce in order to be successful.

Dr. Ashwin Vasan, commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, is a primary care physician, epidemiologist, and public health expert with nearly 20 years of experience working to improve physical and mental health, social welfare and public policy for marginalized populations in New York City, nationally, and globally. Dr. Vasan began his career in global health, working at Partners in Health and the WHO, and most recently served as the president and CEO of Fountain House. He serves as public health and clinical faculty at Columbia University.

Why did you decide to pursue a career in health care?
Growing up watching my mom practice medicine in Chicago and looking back on inequities I witnessed in India imprinted on me what health inequities mean in practice. I quickly grew aware of the limits of clinical medicine in solving social and economic problems. Pursuing public health and medicine was the best of both, addressing individual medical needs while working to fix the large-scale social, economic, and political forces that worsened the health of my patients.

What is the biggest challenge currently facing New York’s health care system?
We must rectify our state’s growing health care workforce shortage. COVID-19 propelled an existing issue into one that poses an existential threat to our health care system. This is especially true in nursing and behavioral health, whose workforce is contracting despite unprecedented demand for services. We must take meaningful steps towards building up our workforce, investing in training pipelines, and protecting them from burnout and mental health issues.

How can New York State ensure access to affordable health care?
We need our health care systems to work more cohesively and coherently together, and the NYS Medicaid 1115 waiver represents an opportunity for our most vulnerable community members to receive care that is tailored to the solutions that deliver the most value for health. We need expanded value-based payment models and joint goal-setting and evaluation at every level, and public health has a unique role to play in population health planning.

What does the future of health care look like?
The future of health care must be truly intertwined with public health. Life expectancy is falling despite rising health care spending, meaning we must find better alignment with our overall goals to save lives and reduce preventable suffering. Achieving these population health goals demands collaboration and alignment with and across health care systems. Public health can facilitate this through robust population level data analytics, deep community partnerships and workforce, and connections between social and clinical systems.

Miriam Vega, PhD, is currently the chief executive officer of the Joseph P. Addabbo Family Health Center, Inc. A published and experienced executive of nonprofits, she has led JPA through some of the most challenging times in its history while enriching its essential and vibrant importance in the communities it serves. Dr. Vega is known for creating the CHANGE model, which helps to build culturally responsive programming, quality improvement, and organizational infrastructure at community-based organizations throughout the country. She is also nationally known as a turnaround specialist and is deeply committed to alleviating health disparities and bringing culturally responsive and comprehensive health care services to those who need it the most.

Why did you decide to pursue a career in health care? 
It is not so much that I decided to pursue a career in health care. It found me. According to my mother, I always wanted to be a psychologist. I got my doctorate in psychology and wanted to be useful and on the ground. Then I was offered a postdoctoral fellowship at SUNY Downstate Medical Center and the CDC and the rest was history. I never left health care. I changed my field and focus from HIV to general health. But community health is part of my DNA.

What is the biggest challenge currently facing New York’s health care system?
I believe the system is maxed out at this point and smaller health care centers, which tend to connect directly with the community, are being pushed to the margins. Yet, without community health centers, Covid-19 vaccination efforts would have gone sideways and other health incentives moving forward will struggle.

How can New York State ensure access to affordable health care? 
New York State needs to really rally behind community health centers and reach an equitable agreement on payments to the health centers which are vastly underpaid, under-resourced and overworked.

What does the future of health care look like? 
Health care in the future will include more at home health systems, more telemedicine, more remote chronic-disease condition monitoring and more automated processes that will allow for more personal and specific care.

Selwyn M. Vickers, MD, FACS, is the president and CEO of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He assumed the role on September 19, 2022. Dr. Vickers is an internationally recognized pancreatic cancer surgeon, pancreatic cancer researcher, and pioneer in health disparities research. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars. Dr. Vickers continues to see patients.

Why did you decide to pursue a career in health care?
When I was a teen, my Uncle Leroy — a family practitioner — introduced me to a patient of his, who was so grateful to Leroy for not ignoring his pain and getting him the treatment and care he needed. I loved what my uncle did for his patients. I knew then my calling was to practice medicine and make a difference in people’s lives.

What is the biggest challenge currently facing New York’s health care system?
Ensuring equity is one of the greatest challenges. We must work together to deal with disparate health outcomes that are largely due to social determinants, including unequal access to primary care, housing, education, and healthy food. These inequalities prevent all people from experiencing the greatest benefits from our health care system. Everyone loses if we don’t address this. We lose productive people who can contribute to society, and we create increased suffering that can be avoided.

How can New York State ensure access to affordable health care?
Earlier this year, New York State passed legislation requiring all NYS Medicaid managed care plans to contract with any of the state’s six NCI-designated cancer centers. I am proud that MSK advocated for this legislation that will give more New Yorkers from underserved communities access to the highest-quality cancer care. We look forward to continuing to work closely with lawmakers in Albany and across New York to reduce health disparities in the fight against cancer.

What does the future of health care look like?
The future of health care is defined by how medicine, science, and technology enable better outcomes and access for all people. For example, advances in genomics and precision medicine will allow us to tailor the prevention and management of diseases to an individual’s specific needs.