The Institute’s Dr. Neil S. Calman Receives Lewis and Jack Rudin New York Prize in Medicine and Health from The New York Academy of Medicine

(From left) Alice Rudin, SVP for Foundations at Rudin Management, Dr. Carol R. Horowitz, Dr. Calman and New York Academy of Medicine President Dr. Jo Ivey Boufford.
New York, NY (February 1, 2017) – The New York Academy of Medicine honored the 2015 and 2016 recipients of the Lewis and Jack Rudin New York Prize in Medicine and Health, Dr. Neil S. Calman of the Institute for Family Health and Dr. Carol R. Horowitz of Mount Sinai, at a special event on January 26, 2017. Following a reception with more than one hundred guests, each award recipient delivered a lecture on his or her work: 2015 awardee Dr. Calman spoke on “The Institute for Family Health: Making Health Equality a Reality” and 2016 awardee Dr. Horowitz’s talk was titled “Relationship-Centered: How I Learned to Understand and Address Health Equity.
The Lewis and Jack Rudin New York Prize for Medicine and Health was established to provide a forum for a distinguished member of the health care community to receive recognition from colleagues and the public at large. It recognizes that the health care sector can be a force for change to promote health and prevent threats to health such as obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, and pulmonary disease, which share the same risk factors as tobacco and alcohol use and are heavily tied to the high costs of our health care system. Each year’s recipient is chosen by a selection committee composed of leaders in health care, public health, and health policy.
“Drs. Calman’s and Horowitz’s work in vulnerable communities is more important now than ever before as the future of recent health care reforms is in question,” said Academy President Jo Ivey Boufford, MD. “The persistent disparities in health outcomes between those in poor communities and those in wealthier neighborhoods are not intractable. Both award recipients have made real progress in working with the communities they serve to understand the complex issues and implement solutions. Their examples should provide real motivation to all of us working to improve the health of all living in our city.”
Neil S. Calman, MD, is President and Chief Executive Officer of The Institute for Family Health and Chair of the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai/Mount Sinai Hospital. Since 1983, Dr. Calman has led the Institute in developing family health centers in the Bronx and Manhattan (where he practiced for 38 years), and in the Hudson Valley. Under his leadership, the Institute has been successful in establishing health professional training in medicine, nursing, administration and mental health. In 2012, through an affiliation between the Institute and Mount Sinai, Dr. Calman became Professor and Chair of a new Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai where family physicians now practice and teach with full clinical privileges in the Mount Sinai Health System and its seven affiliated hospitals. For fifteen years, Dr. Calman has also been a leader in the national effort to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in health outcomes, leading to the Institute’s designation by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) as a National Center of Excellence in the Elimination of Disparities.
Carol R. Horowitz, MD, MPH, is a practicing general internist in Harlem, health services researcher and Professor in the Departments of Population Health Science and Policy & Medicine at Mount Sinai. She uses community and stakeholder engaged approaches to understand and eliminate health disparities related to common chronic diseases. She co- directs Mount Sinai’s new Center for Health Equity and Community Engaged Research, through which she has frequently collaborated with the Institute on programs to improve the quality of care and outcomes of diverse populations of adults with diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease and other health conditions through clinical and community programs.
Previous recipients of The Lewis and Jack Rudin New York Prize for Medicine and Health are Dr. David Ho of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and The Rockefeller University, Dr. Harold Freeman of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. John H. Laragh of the New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center, Dr. Susan Band Horwitz of Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Dr. Barbara Barlow of Harlem Hospital Center.