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Insights
Hospitals are more than just medical buildings
Working with our communities to secure healthcare accessibility now and a strong workforce in the future
Hospitals and other healthcare facilities are not simply where people receive medical care. Ingrained in the fabric of every community where people live and work, they play a central role in protecting and promoting public health. They invest in their communities and employees, and ensure access to quality care for individuals and families of all income levels, inspiring others within the community to do the same.
Healthcare providers and communities thrive on each other’s support, and flourish when there is mutual focus on educating people young and old on better ways to take care of themselves, and providing opportunities for meaningful, well-paying jobs. This expansive view of health care allows us to think differently about what ails our communities and, together, develop innovative ideas and solutions.
Hospitals, health systems drive collaboration
Opportunities to improve health often start at home, and in places like schools, houses of worship, businesses and other workplaces. There, we find partners and leaders who help us, as health care providers, better understand the underlying issues impacting local residents, and help build long-term relationships and trust that strengthen the core of the community.
Partners can help us learn, for example, whether neighborhoods and families are struggling with addiction, depression or other behavioral health issues that may require an influx of new services that we can make available to schools, social service agencies or at our primary care offices. They can help us identify where problems like food insecurity may exist, so we can give families access to nutrition programs that help them put healthy food on the table. They point us to effective ways we might help prevent gun violence locally or deter young people from getting involved with gangs.
We don’t have all the answers to the many systemic problems affecting society, but as healthcare providers, we believe we have an obligation to help revitalize underserved communities and overcome barriers to care. Working with our local partners, we can boost health literacy, encourage preventive care measures, and promote wellness and lifestyle changes that lead to better overall health outcomes.
Expanding access to health care
Central to our mission to improve the health of our communities, Northwell has expanded access to care in cities, towns and villages throughout the New York area. Beyond our 21 hospitals and more than 1,000 other sites of care throughout the City of New York, Long Island, the Hudson Valley and western Connecticut, we interact with people in so many ways and so many different places, including:
- expanding language interpretation for those with limited English, hearing, speech or vision to ensure that diverse communities are understood and welcome;
- organizing seasonal clinics, mobile mammography, and pop-up skin cancer screenings; and
- developing 24/7, on-demand emergency care services accessible through smart devices.
Creating a pipeline of talent
Among the many ways they stimulate the local economy, hospitals and health systems are typically the largest employers within their communities and purchasers of goods and services. Every week, for instance, Northwell recruits, hires and trains hundreds of new workers with diverse skills and career interests, stoking economic growth and improving the quality of life for employees and their families as well as the neighborhoods where they live and work.
Fostering these principles over the past three decades since becoming the state’s first integrated health system in the early 1990s, Northwell now employs about 87,000 people -- New York State’s largest private employer.
We have built an extensive pipeline of talent designed to engage with young people beginning in middle and high school. We offer career days where they can interact with our caregivers and other health care professionals, numerous programs for college students interested in medical research, and learning opportunities that introduce young people to potential careers in neuroscience. Another novel initiative is a medical scholars program targeting high school and college students from underprivileged backgrounds, helping to increase diversity among our caregivers.
Northwell’s latest endeavor to help young people learn about and pursue health care careers involves a collaboration with Bloomberg Philanthropies and New York City Public Schools. Through its School of Health Sciences, to be based in Woodside, Queens, Northwell will become one of 10 U.S. health systems to build a high school to educate, train, and recruit the next generation of health care workers. Hands-on and classroom experiences will allow thousands of students in urban and rural areas to graduate and go on to earn family-sustaining wages, or continue to post-secondary schools.
Through these types of innovative partnerships, we are creating new models of learning that will have a lasting impact on our communities and the health care industry as a whole.
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