Officials from the North Shore-LIJ Health System and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) recently celebrated the opening of a Center for Health and Wellness on the 116-acre campus.
Cold Spring Harbor, NY — Officials from the North Shore-LIJ Health System and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) recently celebrated the opening of a Center for Health and Wellness on the 116-acre campus.
Located in Dolan Hall at CSHL, the center is staffed five days a week by a North Shore-LIJ nurse practitioner and an administrative associate to provide confidential health counseling and wellness services to more than 1,000 CSHL employees, M.D.s, Ph.D.s, fellows and graduate students, as well as their spouses and domestic partners. Services include urgent care to staff who are experiencing minor illnesses or have sustained minor injuries, as well as health screenings (for blood pressure, glucose, cholesterol, etc.), flu immunizations, smoking cessation, medical referrals, and guidance on health and wellness issues.
“Helping our employees avoid potentially serious health problems at the very early stage is not only good for our employees but helps keep our healthcare expenses down,” said Bruce Stillman, Ph.D., president of CSHL.
For North Shore-LIJ, the opening of the Health and Wellness Center at CSHL is an important first step toward expanding health and wellness services in the community by partnering with large employers. “As healthcare reform begins to take hold, it’s clear that major employers like Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and North Shore-LIJ need to take a much more active and aggressive role in helping employees—and the community at large—change their lifestyles,” said Michael J. Dowling, president and chief executive officer of North Shore-LIJ.
In 2010, North Shore-LIJ created a Department of Population Health to develop and implement new health and wellness strategies for North Shore-LIJ’s own workforce of 43,000, as well as the communities they serve throughout the New York metropolitan area. “The goal of an onsite health and wellness center like what we have at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is to keep healthy people healthy, and make it easy for those who might have a chronic illness to manage their health more appropriately,” said Jacqueline Moline, MD, the health system’s chair of population health.
The vast majority of the estimated $2.7 trillion that the nation is expected to spend this year on healthcare goes toward treating people with chronic preventable diseases affected by lifestyle choices such as smoking, poor eating habits and physical inactivity. Rather than continuing to expend resources on treating people when they are sick, a key focus of federal health reform is disease prevention and wellness.
“By partnering with North Shore-LIJ, we are saving lives and improving health,” said Katie Raftery, vice president of human resources at CSHL.
To view a video of the recent ribbon-cutting ceremony, go to: www.northshorelij.com/NSLIJ/media-portal/wellness/wellness-center-opens
Media Contacts:
Brian Mulligan/Terry Lynam
North Shore-LIJ
516-465-2618/2600
tlynam@nshs.edu
Dagnia Zeidlickis
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
516-367-8455
zeidlick@cshl.edu
Written by: Communications Department | publicaffairs@cshl.edu | 516-367-8455