NYU Langone is getting a $60 million gift to ramp up women’s health services in Midtown, it announced Wednesday.
Billionaire philanthropists Allison and Roberto Mignone donated $50 million to the hospital system to expand and integrate primary care, pregnancy services and midlife and sexual health at the existing women’s health clinic at NYU Langone East 53rd Street Ambulatory Care Center. The center – now known as the Mignone Women’s Health Collaborative – includes more than 125 providers across 20 women’s health specialties working under one roof.
In addition to the Mignone family’s gift, hedge fund manager Ken Griffin contributed $10 million to establish a clinic on the second floor focused on women’s well-being and quality of life. The Griffin Healthspan and Vitality Center, which the health system plans to start building next year, will bring together sports medicine and orthopedic doctors to help women stay active as they age, dieticians to offer nutrition guidance and perinatal mental health specialists to address trauma and burnout, according to the health system.
The donation aims to ramp up existing women’s health services at the Midtown clinic. NYU opened the Joan H. Tisch Center for Women’s Health on the Upper East Side in 2011 to establish a central location for women’s health services. Services have since moved to East 53rd Street and grown to include routine cancer screenings, fertility care and high-risk pregnancy services.
Women’s health has historically been under-researched and underfunded – a phenomenon that has often led women to be diagnosed and treated like “small men,” said Dr. Elizabeth Comen, a breast oncologist and co-director of the Mignone Women’s Health Collaborative. The investment in services at a single clinic that focuses on integration across specialties is valuable not only for convenience, but to help clinicians collaborate, she said.
“You can have the cardiologist talking to the sports medicine doctor, or the menopause specialist talking to a sexual health expert,” Comen said.
In addition to expanding services, the donation will also support women’s health research and education by establishing new women’s health courses at NYU Langone’s Grossman School of Medicine. Comen said that the health system is still designing coursework and did not offer specifics.
