SIUH’s Community Outreach Team provides multi-topic healthcare knowledge and awareness to Island residents

by Jessica Jones-Gorman • Photos By Amessé Photography

Early on a brisk and snowy February Saturday, smack in the middle of the American Heart Association’s Heart Health Month, Christine Hollie and the Staten Island University Hospital Community Outreach team were at the Staten Island Mall, offering pamphlets, screenings, and a “Walk with the Doc.”

“Together with the Borough President’s office and The Richmond County Medical Society, we participated in an event to highlight the fact that heart disease is the number one killer of women,” noted Hollie, senior director of Community Outreach for SIUH, who arranges these community events for the hospital system. “About 40 or 50 people gathered to walk and talk with Dr. Jennifer Malpeso, an SIUH cardiologist, who discussed heart health and why it matters.”

When the event was over, Hollie attended a Youth Empowerment breakfast at the Central Family Life Center in Stapleton, one SIUH co-sponsored. There, the Community Outreach team took the opportunity to stress upcoming free heart health screenings and education programs, continuing to feed knowledge about heart health to a population of the borough that is highly impacted by the disease.

“It’s our job to foster and nourish these community relationships,” Hollie said, speaking about her role in community outreach, a department in which she has worked for the past 12 years. “We respond to the needs of the community by creating or participating in events that stress the importance of preventative care and the power of the individual. It’s one of the hospital’s responsibilities—to reach out and maintain an ongoing relationship with all members of the community we serve.”

For Hollie, that very personal commitment to improve healthcare knowledge and awareness started years ago when she attended Stony Brook University and majored in cardiopulmonary technology and respiratory therapy.

“I began working in healthcare as a respiratory therapist in the 1970s,” she recalled. “In 1984, at the former Doctors Hospital, is when and where my community activities expanded. I was constantly interacting and addressing the needs of the patients, all while learning the internal and external operations of the hospital. And there were personal healthcare needs within myself and in my own family, as long as I can remember, and that made me address and think about patient challenges.”

So, Hollie began her career in hospital administration, addressing community, staff, patient, and doctor concerns, while coordinating community events. In 2003, when Doctors Hospital became a part of SIUH, Hollie became part of the hospital’s administrative team, and soon Community Outreach became a separate and identifiable department.

“I recall a meeting at SIUH, with our CEO at the time, Anthony Ferreri, [now executive vice president for the North–Shore Health System] and some of the leaders of underserved communities,” Hollie said. “He inquired how we could make their experiences better, and really that was the beginning of the Department of Community Outreach as we know it today: The highest levels of administration asking us ‘How we can serve you better?’”

The department is dedicated to listening to and answering the healthcare needs and requests of Staten Island. It consists of a staff of four, but involves the entire hospital in all of its tasks.

“Being a part of a large hospital system enables my team to make use of people, from all of the departments, in this building and beyond,” Hollie explained. “The resources of the system and hospital are constantly at the community’s disposal. Today I received a call from a school saying that they wanted to create a program encouraging healthy eating because March is Nutrition Month.

Now I will reach out within the organization to identify the best resources for this program, providing staff for screenings, speakers for presentations, and capturing all of the correct data to complete that project.”

The Community Outreach team follows the Healthcare Calendar of Observation to facilitate educational opportunities—hosting informative events and presentations for each month of the year. After March’s Nutrition Awareness and Colon Cancer initiatives will come April’s Alcohol Awareness, May’s Stroke—World No Tobacco Day and Senior Awareness, and June’s Men’s Health programs.

“We are dedicated to making a positive difference,” Hollie said. “And the message of all of these programs is prevention is better than a cure. When we can help our patients identify the warning signs and lifestyle choices—like smoking cessation that can lead to chronic diseases of the heart and lung, stroke or diabetes and then stimulate some sort of change, possibly preventing 80 percent of those chronic diseases from occurring—we’ve definitely accomplished our goal.”

SIUH’s Community Outreach department is also responsible for providing a medical mobile unit to the community, identifying with a population of patients who do not make regular visits to a hospital or clinic. “It’s our role to create different activities that will capture the interest of people who need them,” Hollie said. “The mobile unit goes out into the community, offers screenings and provides health information, stimulating interest and support for a part of Staten Island that needs that sort of assessment.”

For Hollie, it’s that type of work that provides an opportunity to change and possibly save a life.
“Our mission is to help as many community members as we possibly can,” she concluded.

SIUH Community Outreach
718.226.1911