Slaight Family Announces $50 million Gift to Advance Health Care Across Five Hospitals
Mount Sinai Hospital is proud to be included in an extraordinary $50 million gift announced by the Slaight Family Foundation to benefit five Toronto hospitals. Mount Sinai Hospital, UHN, St. Michael’s, Sunnybrook and CAMH are the beneficiaries of the gift, which will fulfill the Slaight Family’s commitment to advancing health care.
“This gift will allow Mount Sinai to advance our maternity care, the hospital’s largest program. It will increase the services that we provide for the close to 7000 births a year here, as well as to marginalized women in our community and abroad,” said Joseph Mapa, President and CEO of Mount Sinai, following the October 29th announcement.
The funds will be directed in support of three exciting projects at Mount Sinai:
- The new Slaight Family Labour and Delivery Unit, currently under construction within the Frances Bloomberg Women’s & Infants’ Centre, is scheduled to open in the Fall of 2014, and will include 19 labour and delivery rooms, five operative birthing rooms for Caesarean-sections and four high-risk delivery rooms. The rooms will have additional features such as special bathtubs that can assist with pain management. The unit is being designed to reflect a warm, soothing environment with natural light to minimize the clinical feel of the space. Mount Sinai has the largest percentage of high risk pregnancies in Canada and this new facility will reflect the state-of-the art care for which Mount Sinai is recognized.
- Furthering the Hospital’s long-standing commitment to providing quality, accessible, health care to all populations, The Slaight Family Maternal Health Equity Fund will provide prenatal care and perinatal mental health outreach services to marginalized and vulnerable women locally and internationally. The Hospital will do this in two ways – it will open up clinics in local neighbourhood community centres where marginalized women often don’t know how to access care, and, it will work closely with partners in Ethiopia to create a family medicine based maternity care program at the University of Addis Ababa, which will be a model of sustainable education and enable access to quality care for the women of Ethiopia and their newborns.
One of the exciting initiatives of the Equity Fund is an innovative new program, the first of its kind in Canada, that will connect women who are dealing with post—partum mental health issues to the specialists at Mount Sinai through computer teleconferencing. It means that the women can access care without leaving their neighbourhoods, and remain connected to their existing support systems.
Photo: Ada Slaight with Dr. Anne Biringer
- The Ada Slaight and Slaight Family Foundation Directorship in Family Medicine Maternity Care supports Mount Sinai’s expertise in growing the practice of Family Medicine Maternity Care. Over the years, the number of family physicians who provide maternal medicine has declined – most family physicians refer patients to physicians who specialize in maternal care. However, this can be a challenge for women in remote areas who may not have access to specialists and for women with very straightforward pregnancies who would like to have a continuum of care with their own family physician. Mount Sinai’s Dr. Anne Biringer is one of a few family physicians in Ontario who still delivers babies and through the Ada Slaight and Slaight Family Foundation Directorship in Family Medicine Maternity Care, will ensure that more family physicians are trained to provide maternity care. “Training family physicians in maternity care means that there is a continuum of care for the patient, which ultimately, is the best care,” says Biringer. “This gift will serve as an example of what can be achieved when private citizens step up and take a leadership role in shaping health care.”
The investment by the Slaight Family in maternal care at Mount Sinai supports the Hospital’s Campaign to Renew Sinai, the largest campaign in the hospital’s history that will see the revitalization of its facilities and growth of its internationally recognized clinical and research programs.
