New York, January 30, 2008 – The HHC Foundation of NYC is pleased to announce that nearly $50,000 was raised through its inaugural HHC Physician Alumni/ae Campaign which was launched last fall. Proceeds from the Campaign will establish a Physician Alum Fund to help support resident training throughout the public hospital system.

To establish the Fund, the Physician Alumni/ae Campaign, the first of its kind at HHC, reached out to physician “alum” around the country who performed their residencies and internships at one of HHC’s eleven acute care hospitals. The Campaign enlisted some of the country’s top physicians to contribute to the development of tomorrow’s medical leaders at HHC, by providing access to innovative technological advances.

The first donation from the Fund to HHC will support the purchase of a NOELLE robotic simulator to aid in resident and staff training. Robotic simulators represent the newest trend in healthcare training technology, programmed to reproduce a cadre of medical conditions that allow physicians to practice and perfect treatment on a variety of simulated emergency complications. NOELLE, a childbirth simulator, is a life-like pregnant model designed to simulate birth in numerous conditions, with complications or without, in breach, in minutes, or in hours. She is being used around the world to train healthcare teams in order to ensure that the delivery of new life is safe and healthy for both mother and child.

The simulator will be housed at HHC’s Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx. Together, Jacobi Medical Center and North Central Bronx Hospital compose the North Bronx Healthcare Network, home to one of the five largest midwifery programs in the United States. Throughout HHC’s network of acute care hospitals, maternity care is provided by teams of experienced, compassionate health care providers, including physicians, midwives, nurse practitioners, health educators, social workers and nutritionists. Each year, these teams welcome the birth of 22,000 new babies at HHC.