Jamaica Hospital Medical Center
Department of PsychiatryÂ
Daniel Chen, MD
Chairman, Department of Psychiatry and Addiction Services
Psychiatrist
Ira Frankel, Ph.D, LCSW
Administrator of the Department of Psychiatry and Addiction services
Clinical Social Worker
Hover over each box to read more
Community-based Approaches to Address Factors Contributing to Structural Racism in Public Health
​
Project Coordinators: Ivy Chen, B.A, and Alexandra Ramlall, B.A.
alexandra.ramlall18@my.stjohns.edu
​
This project was supported by a grant to FHMC (Daniel Chen, Project Director) from Department of Health and Human Services.
Subcontract to St. John's University (Elizabeth Brondolo, Principal Investigator)
This collaboration includes community-driven Approaches to Address Factors Contributing to Structural Racism in Public Health.There has been increasing awareness of the role of structural racism as a driver of public health disparities. To address structural racism and reduce these disparities, the Office of Minority Health of the US Department of Health and Human Services awarded a grant to Flushing Hospital Medical Center (Daniel Chen, Project Director). The grant is entitled “Community-driven Approaches to Address Factors Contributing to Structural Racism in Public Health. We have a subcontract on this award to help design and evaluate the programs developed.
Our project is targeted at community-dwelling adults who are members of racial/ethnic groups who are at risk for depression and anxiety as a function of race-related and other stress exposures and who do not traditionally engage in mental health services. In our service area, this includes members of the diverse Asian community, a group at high risk for exposure to discrimination at many levels. Further, mental health stigma is common among this group, and traditional mental health services present significant barriers in terms of language and compatibility.
Our focus is four-fold:
1) to identify laws, policies, and practices which impede access to and utilization of mental health care for members of these groups; 2) to design individual and community-level interventions to improve access and use of mental health services among these groups, including interventions to address race-related stressors and decrease mental health stigma; 3) design and implement evaluation procedures to assess the effects of the interventions on individual-level mental health, community-level mental health access and utilization, and the development of new community-level resources for promoting mental health; and 4) disseminate information on barriers to mental health care and resources to promote mental health care to key stakeholders in the community capable of maintaining these effects.
Working in concert with Drs. Daniel Chen and Ira Frankel and collaborators from the Natan Kline Institute, Dr. Crystal Lewis and Marilena Lekas, CHIRP Fellows are helping to design and evaluate the interventions.
Just recently, we worked with CAIPA to film a video based on insomnia in Chinese and English.
​
​ Understanding Predictors of Aging-in-Place: A Collaboration of St. John’s CHIRP, JHMC, FHMC, and HealthFirst
​
Project Coordinator: Andrew Miele, M.A.
​
​
​
​
​
​
To identify specific needs of patients who are at risk for requiring institutional long term care, St. John’s University and JHMC and FHMC are collaborating with HealthFirst, a managed care company. We are using a combination of claims data from Health First and community level data from the census and criminal justice and environmental databases to identify factors that support resilience and facilitate aging in place or increase risk and drive use of institutional long term care. Analyses examine individual and neighborhood sociodemographic, clinical and access to care variables that may promote resilience or risk. Working with HealthFirst partners, Sule Baptiste,
Ph.D., Marty Masek, Ph.D., and Stephen Sefick, Ph.D. CHIRP Fellows led by Andrew Miele, are working on data management and analysis.
Successful Aging in Place: An NYC-OMH Funded Project
​
Project Coordinators: Emilia Mikrut, M.A., and Luke Keating, M.A.
​
Emilia.mikrut18@my.stjohns.edu
​
​
​
​
This project was supported by the NYS Office of Mental Health Grant
More than a third of Americans will require some form of institutional long term care as they age. This care is often more expensive and less desirable than aging-in-place. To provide support for programs to improve resilience among older adults and enhance their ability to age-in-place, JHMC received a grant from the NYS Office of Mental Health (Dr. Daniel Chen is the program leader) to conduct a multi-pronged demonstration project aimed at increasing integrated behavioral and medical health services to elderly residents. Many of these residents are of lower socioeconomic status and/or belong to historically minoritized groups experiencing health disparities exacerbated by the pandemic. We have developed a comprehensive biopsychosocial screening. Participants will be screened and referred to different programs of care. The effects of these treatments on their mental and physical health and psychosocial needs and their ability to age-in-place will be evaluated As of February 2023, we will begin recruitment of participants and data collection. Working with JHMC physicians, Dr. Daniel Chen and Ira Frankel, CHIRP Fellows, led by Emilia Mikrut, MA and Luke Keating, MA are developing screening and assessment protocols.