From left: Julia Nicolaou Burns, MPH, Administrator, Selikoff Centers for Occupational Health; Michael A. Crane, MD, MPH; Monsignor Kevin Sullivan, PhD, Executive Director, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York; and Beatriz Diaz Taveras, Executive Director, Catholic Charities Community Services.
A newly awarded $1.3 million grant from Catholic Charities is helping the Mount Sinai Health System address the unmet medical needs of 9/11 first responders who may be uninsured or facing extreme financial hardship. Many of these workers, who assisted in the cleanup efforts at Ground Zero during the World Trade Center disaster, wore little or no protective gear and received minimal supervision while directly handling materials that contained asbestos and other toxins.
The Catholic Charities grant will help these men and women pay for counseling, transportation to and from medical appointments, and other uncovered health-related expenses.
“Many responders today are unable to work in environments that further expose them to chemicals, dusts, or toxins, or heavy physical labor,” limitations that make it difficult to find or maintain employment, says Michael A. Crane, MD, MPH, Director of the World Trade Center Health Program Clinical Center of Excellence (CCE) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Medical Director of the Selikoff Centers for Occupational Health. He says the situation at Ground Zero became so toxic that “airborne concentrations of dust overwhelmed the upper airways of the responders, and particles that might otherwise have been filtered out directly entered the workers’ tracheae, bronchi, and lungs.”
Says Philip J. Landrigan, MD, MSc, Dean for Global Health and Professor of Environmental Medicine, Public Health, and Pediatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai: “We are delighted that with the support of this grant from Catholic Charities we will be able to provide these workers with the care they so richly deserve and earned through their selfless sacrifice.”
Recently, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health renewed two contracts at the Icahn School of Medicine that will continue to fund the World Trade Center (WTC) Health Program CCE and the WTC General Responder Data Center for another five years.