Who We Are


Our Mission

The Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation seeks to assist Greater Cleveland’s organizations and leaders to improve the health and well-being of the Jewish and general communities now and for generations to come.

Bennett Yankowitz, Chair, Board of Directors

Victor Gelb
Chair, Board of Directors

Mitchell Balk, President

Mitchell Balk
President

 
 

Our History

The Mt. Sinai Legacy of Caring

Historic hospital scene.
 

More than one hundred years ago, in June 1903, an institution destined to achieve a national reputation for medical excellence first opened its doors to care for the people of Cleveland. That institution, Mt. Sinai Hospital, was generously supported by the Cleveland Jewish community.

Not only did Mt. Sinai develop into a superior teaching and research medical center, but from the 1960s to the 1990s, it was perhaps the largest private provider of care to the poor in the State of Ohio. The Mt. Sinai Medical Center operated the east side’s only Level I Trauma Center and had Cleveland’s first and, for many years, only emergency medicine residency training program. Clearly Mt. Sinai, which was affiliated with Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, has been part of Cleveland’s reputation as a medical hub.

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Sea Change: The Cleveland Health Care Marketplace

In the mid-1990s, consolidation of Cleveland’s health care industry and the entrance of for-profit hospital corporations into Northeast Ohio forever changed the medical landscape. Several non-profit hospitals in Northeast Ohio sold assets to for-profit corporations or created joint ventures, resulting in a number of new health grantmaking foundations.  In the case of Mt. Sinai, one of the largest of the resulting foundations, hospital leadership decided to sell the institution’s operating assets in April of 1996 to position the Mt. Sinai Health Care System (Mt. Sinai, Richmond Heights and Laurelwood Hospitals, as well as several outpatient facilities) to compete successfully with developing systems of University Hospitals and The Cleveland Clinic, with The Mt. Sinai Medical Center as the flagship tertiary care center of the new system.

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A New Health Care Philanthropy for Cleveland

An additional goal of the sale of Mt. Sinai assets was to create a philanthropic legacy that would perpetuate the mission of the non-profit Mt. Sinai into the future, no matter what the future held for the health care delivery business.

The Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation developed into a leading health philanthropy, already distributing more than $62 million in its initial ten years of grantmaking. Major programs have included:

  1. ChildSight® in the Cleveland Municipal School District
  2. The Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation Scholars Program at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine
  3. The Monarch School at Bellefaire
  4. The Greater Cleveland Health Education and Service Council
  5. The Case/Mt. Sinai Center for Medical Simulation, a collaboration among Case School of Medicine and Cleveland’s academic medical centers.
  6. The Health Policy Institute of Ohio
  7. Senior Transportation Connection of Cuyahoga County

 
 


ChildSight® provides free vision screenings and free quality eyeglasses, as needed, to all 12,000 middle school students in the Cleveland Municipal School District, as well as students in the East Cleveland Public Schools. With puberty come changes in eyesight, and urban children do not get to the eye doctor on a routine basis. Kids who can’t see the blackboard can’t learn. ChildSight® provides these services on-site, in-school.

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  Boy with glasses  
 


The Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation Scholars Program has assisted the Case School of Medicine attract young, highly promising research stars in order to build its basic science departments. The Foundation’s initial $1.5 million investment in the first six Scholars has already leveraged more than $7 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health. An additional grant of $1.5 million will be used to recruit an additional six Mt. Sinai Scholars to Case.

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  Medical students  
 


Established in 2001, The Monarch School at Bellefaire is Northeast Ohio’s first school for children in the autism spectrum. The School is at capacity and has developed a teaching and research affiliation with Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School. With help from the Foundation, the Monarch Boarding Academy, a residential facility for children with autism spectrum disorders, has recently opened its doors.

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  Young girl learning to read  
 


The Greater Cleveland Health Education and Service Council (GCHESC) continues to operate Mt. Sinai’s long-recognized programs in urban health. Focused on reducing health disparities in minority populations, GCHESC operates cardiovascular risk reduction and smoking cessation programs, as well as other initiatives in the area of health promotion/disease prevention.

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  education  
 


The Case/Mt. Sinai Center for Medical Simulation is the result of a $10 million grant by the Foundation to Case School of Medicine. Designed as an interdisciplinary center to improve clinical competency of physicians and other health professionals, the Center will be a major tool in efforts to improve patient safety. The Center is a collaboration among Case, The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, University Hospitals of Cleveland, MetroHealth Medical Center and the Louis Stokes Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

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  Operating room  
 


The Health Policy Institute of Ohio, based in Columbus, was established in 2003 by health-focused grantmaking foundations from around the state to inform state health policy and to ensure that decisions on health program spending in Ohio are research-based and data driven.

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  Mediacl professionals  
 


Senior Transportation Connection of Cuyahoga County. The Foundation has been an advocate and funder of efforts to launch a countywide system of senior transportation and to inform federal policymakers on the importance of transportation to a senior’s ability to remain at home in the community and deter institutionalization for as long as possible. Led by the County Planning Commission, and with additional funding assistance from the United Way-initiated Senior Success Vision Council, and the Deaconess, Saint Luke’s and Sisters of Charity foundations, the Senior Transportation Connection of Cuyahoga County will soon provide a system that is safe, efficient, affordable and sustainable to serve the transportation needs of seniors countywide.

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  Elder woman on a bus.  

Board of Directors

OFFICERS:

Victor Gelb
Chair

Susan Hurwitz
Sally H. Wertheim, PhD
Vice-Chairs

Marc C. Krantz
Treasurer

Renee Chelm
Secretary

Leslie D. Dunn
S. Lee Kohrman
Robert S. Reitman
Bennett Yanowitz
Life Directors

Morton G. Epstein
Director Emeritus

Mitchell Balk
President














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DIRECTORS:

Thomas W. Adler

Richard J. Bogomolny

Beth W. Brandon

Morton S. Frankel

Avrum I. Froimson, MD

David Goldberg

Henry J. Goodman

Harley I. Gross

J. David Heller

Patricia M. Inglis

Marcia W. Levine

Keith Libman

Zachary T. Paris

Dan A. Polster

Jeffrey L. Ponsky, MD

Susan Ratner

Elaine H. Rocker

Norton W. Rose

Shelley Roth

Susan E. Rubin

Judith Weiss

Nancy G. Wolf, MD, PhD


Staff

Mitchell Balk
President










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Ann Freimuth
Program Officer

Shelly Galvin
Program Officer

Melanie Gavin
Financial Officer

Genese Hewston
Program Assistant

Lisa Zwolinski
Administrative Assistant


Watch a Video

See and hear firsthand the positive impact Mt. Sinai has on our community through a selection of people served.

View "How a Foundation Works...When Its Really Working; Senior Transportation in Cuyahoga County, A Case Study in Strategic Grant Making"

Choose from these formats and sizes:

Large Version - 40MB
Small Version - 23MB


VIew a video about the origins and history of Mt. Sinai in Cleveland in "A Seed Planted. The 1915 Mt. Sinai Time Capsule"

Choose from these formats and sizes:

Large Video - 46MB. Coming Soon.
Small Version - 23MB


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