Tuesday, September 20, 2016Contact: Sasha WalekMount Sinai Press Office(646) 605-5945[email protected]

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

Newswise — (NEW YORK — 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 SystemThe Mount Sinai Health System is an integrated health system committed to providing distinguished care, conducting transformative research, and advancing biomedical education. Structured around seven hospital campuses and a single medical school, the Health System has an extensive ambulatory network and a range of inpatient and outpatient services—from community-based facilities to tertiary and quaternary care.

The System includes approximately 7,100 primary and specialty care physicians; 12 joint-venture ambulatory surgery centers; more than 140 ambulatory practices throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and 31 affiliated community health centers. Physicians are affiliated with the renowned Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, which is ranked among the highest in the nation in National Institutes of Health funding per investigator. The Mount Sinai Hospital is on the “Honor Roll” of best hospitals in America, ranked No. 15 nationally in the 2016-2017 “Best Hospitals” issue of U.S. News & World Report. The Mount Sinai Hospital is also ranked as one of the nation’s top 20 hospitals in Geriatrics, Gastroenterology/GI Surgery, Cardiology/Heart Surgery, Diabetes/Endocrinology, Nephrology, Neurology/Neurosurgery, and Ear, Nose & Throat, and is in the top 50 in four other specialties. New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked No. 10 nationally for Ophthalmology, while Mount Sinai Beth Israel, Mount Sinai St. Luke's, and Mount Sinai West are ranked regionally. Mount Sinai’s Kravis Children’s Hospital is ranked in seven out of ten pediatric specialties by U.S. News & World Report in "Best Children's Hospitals."

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

About the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount SinaiThe Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is an international leader in medical and scientific training, biomedical research, and patient care. It is the medical school for the Mount Sinai Health System, an integrated health care system which includes seven hospitals and an expanding ambulatory network serving approximately 4 million patients per year.

The School has more than 1,800 students in MD, PhD, and Master’s programs and post-doctoral fellowships; more than 5,600 faculty members; over 2,000 residents and fellows; and 23 clinical and research institutes and 34 academic departments. It is ranked among the highest in the nation in National Institutes of Health funding per principal investigator. The School was the first medical school in the country to create a progressive admissions approach for students who seek early assurance of admission through the FlexMed program.

The Graduate School of Biomedical Science trains PhD and MD/PhD students, and offers master’s-level programs in areas such as genetic counseling, clinical research, biomedical sciences, and public health, and an online master’s degree in health care delivery leadership. The seamless connections between our medical school, graduate school, and hospital campuses provide an extraordinary environment for translating scientific discoveries into clinical treatments.

For more information, visit http://icahn.mssm.edu or find the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

About the Arnhold Institute for Global Health The Arnhold Institute for Global Health at the Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai Health System, seeks to improve the health of people and the communities they live in, both in the U.S. and abroad. The Arnhold Institute serves as a global arm of the Mount Sinai Health System, leading research on the design of more equitable and effective care models that are disseminated through digital products, training systems and input on policy design.

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