Harlem Hospital Center - Harlem Hospital

Harlem Hospital Center is a 272-bed public, municipally owned teaching hospital affiliated with Columbia University. It is located in New York City at 506 Lenox Avenue at 135th Street in the Harlem community of Manhattan and was founded in 1887.

Overview

Administratively, Harlem Hospital Center is a member of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation. It is designated as a Level 1 Trauma Center and an Area Wide Burn Center that includes a specialty in plastic and reconstructive surgery to reduce the scarring unique to the African-American community. It is also designated as a Heart Care Station by the American Heart Association and participates in the 911 Receiving Hospitals Advisory Committee. It has been affiliated with the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University since 1962.

The Harlem Hospital Center has engaged in many innovative programs specialized for its inner-city location, such as one of the few specialized asthma centers. While four percent of the national population suffers from asthma, that figure approaches 20 percent in Harlem. It has a referral Center for Tuberculosis, Charles P. Felton National Tuberculosis Center, that served as a premier Model for TB control nationwide.

The hospital provides health care to an economically disadvantaged community; the median family income for its primary service area of Central Harlem is $24,230. Harlem Hospital Center is an important social, political and economic force within the community, and one of the largest US training centers for minority and female physicians.

Harlem Hospital Center provides 450,000 outpatient visits, 76,000 emergency department visits, and 13,000 inpatient admissions per year, and operates a School of Nursing and a Physician assistant program.

May Edward Chinn, the first African-American woman to graduate from Bellevue Hospital Medical College, was also the first African-American woman to intern at Harlem Hospital.

Art work

The hospital owns a set of Works Progress Administration murals, painted by artists including Charles Alston, Alfred Crimi, Georgette Seabrooke, Elba Lightfoot and Vertis Hayes. In addition, a sculpture by John Rhoden, "Untitled (Family)", adorns some of the entrances.

References

Notes

Further reading

• Bailey, A. Peter, The Harlem Hospital Story: 100 Years of Struggle Against Illness, Racism and Genocide (1991) ISBN 096251697X
• "Medical murals." Direction 1 (June 1938): cover, 14-15. Photo essay on murals with medical themes in hospitals by Eric Mose and Ruth Egri (Lincoln Hospital, NYC), and Rudolph Crimi (Harlem Hospital). Cover photograph of Mose at work.

External links

• General Surgery Residency Program
• Hospital Center official NYC site
• Harlem Hospital Internal Medicine Residency Program
• Harlem Hospital Radiology Residency Program
• History of the Hospital
• Harlem Hospital Trauma Center
• Schomburg Exhibit on Harlem Hospital Center