Institute Board Member Jeanne Thelwell Receives 2018 Dorothy Kartashevich Consumer Award from CHCANYS

New York, NY (March 5, 2018) – Today, Institute board member Jeanne Thelwell was presented with the 2018 Dorothy Kartashevich Consumer Award. Ms. Thelwell was presented the award during the annual Community Health Care Association of New York State (CHCANYS) Advocacy Day in Albany, NY. The award was established in honor of the late Dorothy Kartashevich, a Sunset Park Health Center Network board member from 1987 to 1990 and a CHCANYS board member from 1984 to 1988. The award is given to a consumer board member who, for at least three years, has worked tirelessly on his or her center’s behalf, acknowledging and honoring that the backbone of the community health movement is the consumer-run boards that guide individual health centers.

Ms. Thelwell is a dedicated and passionate board member and a strong community health center advocate, sharing her time and talents with the Institute since 2013. As a retired lawyer with significant experience in government, including work as the Deputy Council of the NYS Office of Mental Health and a Commissioner on the NYS Commission of Corrections, Ms. Thelwell brings a wealth of knowledge and skills to the Institute.  She was instrumental in creating the board’s Mental Health Committee in 2013, the board’s first Advocacy Committee in 2017, and advocates ardently on behalf of health centers on a national and local scale with the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC) and CHCANYS, respectively.

“We are so grateful to have Jeanne Thelwell serving on our board. Her dedication to improving the health of the communities we serve inspires us all,” said Neil Calman, MD, president and CEO of the Institute.

Ms. Thelwell has been a patient at the Institute for Family Health since 2009. She joined the Institute’s Board of Directors as a consumer member in 2013 at the recommendation and encouragement of one of her providers.

“I was attracted to health centers because I grew up in the settlement house movement and because the first health centers grew out of the civil rights movement and the war on poverty. Health center advocacy is hard-baked into who we are. I enjoy helping our patients find their own voices to advocate for themselves and registering them to vote so they can be a part of one of the great democracies in history,” said Ms. Thelwell.