The lack of consistent access to quality food, or food insecurity, can have a devastating impact on people's health and well-being. In the wealthiest nation in the world, 34 million people, including 9 million children, are food insecure — a silent crisis that our guest, Debbie Salas-Lopez, MD, MPH, says is only getting worse. She explains how food insecurity impacts health at every age and what Northwell Health is doing to support these communities.

This is Part 2 of our three-part series on food as health. Listen to Part 1, highlighting how Northwell's hospital food transformation and how two experts, Seven Gierlinger and Chef Bruno Tison, led the way. Continue listening as we speak with Tony Hillery from Harlem Grown in Part 3: Food as opportunity.

• Part 2: Food insecurity: How Northwell is helping

• They transformed hospital food from "inedible" to gourmet

Meet the experts

Bruno Tison is the vice president of food services and corporate executive chef. Previously he spent 14 years as executive chef for the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Tison earned Michelin star recognition for three consecutive years as the executive chef at the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn and Spa in California.

Sven Gierlinger is Northwell's Chief Experience Officer. He started his career in the luxury hotel business, holding a series of leadership positions with the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. 

Pregnancy is like a stress test on the body. Most women adapt just fine, but for some, the strain can dramatically raise the risk of heart disease — even in young women. Worse, that risk can remain elevated for years and even decades. On this episode, host Sandra Lindsay, DHS-c, RN, speaks with Evelina Grayver, MD, about how to prevent heart-related problems before, during and after pregnancy. Because heart disease continues to be the No. 1 cause of maternal mortality in the US, Dr. Grayver helped launch a cutting-edge Cardio-Obstetrics Program at Northwell Health to help detect and prevent heart issues for expectant moms.

The specialty is relatively new, so education for patients and clinicians is critical, says Dr. Grayver, who serves as director of Northwell's Women’s Heart Program for the Central Region; and is a member of the Katz Institute for Women's Health.

In this episode, she discusses the need for:

• Pre-conception counseling with a cardiologist and OB/GYN

Additional reading

• Cardiac patient shares her renewed hope for a healthy pregnancy thanks to cardio-obstetrics program. Watch video.

Knowing what you want to be when you grow up can be tricky, but the New York City's Department of Education internship program, FutureReadyNYC, is designed to help. The program provides high school students with exposure to professional careers; Northwell is the program's first healthcare partner. Lenox Hill Hospital on Manhattan's Upper East Side, LIJ Forest Hills Hospital in Queens, and Lenox Health Greenwich Village in lower Manhattan gave students a sense of what a career in medicine could be like. On this episode, Sandra Lindsay, DHSc, MBA, MSN, RN, speaks with two of the 65 participating teens, Suravi and Ayannah, as well as Northwell's vice president for Workforce & Community Education, Brian Aquart, who helps oversee the program.

Of the 1 million people who need hernia surgery in the US each year, most get a procedure that inserts a mesh patch to cover the hernia. Mesh surgery has a high rate of success and satisfies most patients, but some people would rather skip the insert. There is an alternative called the Shouldice Approach: Instead of using mesh, this procedure stitches together the patient's own tissue to repair a hernia. Samer Sbayi, MD, is a leading expert in both surgical approaches and joins the podcast to explain what everyone should know about hernia repairs. 

Dr. Sbayi recently joined Glen Cove Hospital and serves as associate chair of surgery. He is also a Professor of Surgery at Hofstra/Northwell. 

Podcast transcript

Chapters:

• 00:01 - Intro

On this episode, Sandra Lindsay speaks with Monique Rainford, MD, about her new book, "Pregnant While Black: Advancing Justice for Maternal Health in America." The Yale Medicine OB-GYN discusses the role implicit bias and institutional racism play in the birthing experience for Black women in the United States. She offers strategies to reduce maternal mortality rates, which are three times higher for Black women than their white peers. 

Podcast transcript

For too long, Black women have faced high maternal mortality rates, largely due to institutional bias, says Dawnette Lewis, MD, director of Northwell Health's Center for Maternal Health. She joins host Sandra Lindsay, RN, DHSc on this episode during Black Maternal Health Week to discuss the barriers to care Black women face, and what her team is doing to improve access to life-saving services before, during, and after pregnancy. Dr. Lewis has practiced for more than 20 years in maternal-fetal medicine and now oversees all aspects of Northwell’s Maternal Health Program.

Read more about our efforts to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity through the Katz Institute for Women's Health. 

Podcast transcript

This new docu-series follows the lives of a diverse cast of healthcare pros, including paramedics, nurses, emergency physicians and surgeons. On this podcast, we speak with two of the people featured in Emergency NYC: David Langer, MD, and his patient Julian Primiano, a young opera singer who underwent brain surgery. Dr. Langer is the chair of neurosurgery at Lenox Hill Hospital, one of several Northwell hospitals where filming took place. Others include: Cohen Children's Medical Center, North Shore University Hospital, Long Island Jewish Medical Center, Huntington Hospital and South Shore University Hospital. Cameras even followed one Sky Health flight nurse through her day-to-day working Northwell's state-of-the-art emergency helicopter service.

Both Julian and Dr. Langer share their struggles and triumphs and what it's like to watch their journey on Netflix.

Podcast transcript

More from the experts

Dr. Langer shares his experience suffering a spinal cord injury in this op-ed in MedPage Today.

Lenox Hill Hospital first in Manhattan to use brain mapping technology

Learn common causes of pain under the left rib cage.

Have pain under the right rib cage? An emergency medicine physician breaks down the most common causes, and what to do for each.

In Part 2 of this deep dive into ECT, which stands for electroconvulsive therapy, Sohag Sanghani, MD, director of the ECT service at Zucker Hillside Hospital, talks about how the treatment was born, from its invention in 1938 by Italian scientists Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini, to the advent of modified ECT, to it’s impact today. He shares the importance of shedding stigma around ECT, which continues to create barriers to a highly effective therapy for those living with severe depression, psychosis and other behavioral health conditions.

Listeners can find Part 1 of this conversation with Dr. Sanghani in our feed, or read the podcast transcript here. 

Chapters: 

• 00:01 - Intro

More from Northwell Health:

• Learn about ECT from the patient's perspective.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) carries stigma thanks to negative portrayals in movies like "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Such portrayals hide ECT's true value — and the truth about the treatment: ECT has a decades-long track record of safety, and it offers a fast-acting solution for difficult-to-treat severe depression. ECT is also effective for patients with suicidal ideation or depression with psychosis or catatonia, says Sohag Sanghani, MD. He joins Sandra Lindsay, RN, and Rob Hoell to dispel myths and misunderstandings around ECT. In Part 1 of this two-part episode, the director of the ECT service at Zucker Hillside Hospital — which was among the first few in the US to ever use ECT in 1941 — explains how ECT works, who benefits from the treatment and how it changes lives.

Podcast transcript

Chapters:

• 00:01 - Intro

More from Northwell Health:

• Learn about ECT from the patient's perspective.