Mount Sinai has expanded its Center for Post-COVID Care—the first and largest center of its kind—to another location to better serve patients in East Harlem and the South Bronx. The new site will help meet the needs of a growing number of patients with long-term symptoms from COVID-19 needing access to world-leading care. It will also enhance long COVID care for minority populations living in underserved communities who have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, but underdiagnosed with long COVID.
The new location is at Mount Sinai-Internal Medicine Associates at 17 East 102nd Street.
"The South Bronx and East Harlem communities were some of the hardest hit during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Long COVID is likely much more prevalent than many realize in this population and we know it can be extremely debilitating. We know these patients are out there—now it's a matter of reaching them and getting them the care they need," says Rachel Engelberg, MD, Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who cares for patients at the new site.
A $5 million grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality helped fund this new Center. This location will care for a wide spectrum of patients who tested positive for COVID-19 and need help recovering from lingering symptoms. Patients first see a primary care physician and from there are referred to key medical specialties across Mount Sinai Health System including pulmonary medicine, neurology, cardiology, infectious disease, nephrology, physiatry, physical and occupational therapy, radiology, neuropsychiatry, behavioral health, social work, and pharmacy.
The funding will go towards community outreach in Harlem and the South Bronx. Mount Sinai is partnering with two programs that serve these communities—Little Sisters of the Assumption Family Health Service and AIRnyc—to help educate them on long COVID. Mount Sinai experts will also teach physicians in these communities how to evaluate patients for long COVID and refer them to specialists for long COVID care.
"Our goal is to get more people from East Harlem and the South Bronx into care, and we'll do that by bringing long COVID education to the community, creating referral pathways, and improving access to our practices. We're working with our community partners and a patient advisory board, which is made up of people experiencing long COVID, to figure out the best way to do it," says Alex Federman, MD, MPH, Professor of Medicine (General Internal Medicine) at Icahn Mount Sinai, who is one of the project's leaders.
The grant will also support Mount Sinai's long COVID research focused on Black and Hispanic patients in underserved communities to better identify ways to care for these populations and understand symptoms. This work will expand on previous studies on long COVID and disparities. A study from Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) – a national study consortium) involving Mount Sinai researchers and supported by the National Institutes of Health shows Black and Hispanic Americans (groups that were disproportionally affected by the COVID-19 pandemic) may experience more symptoms and health problems related to long COVID when compared to white people, but are less likely to be diagnosed with the condition and getting the proper care. Conversely, patients who have a formal long COVID diagnosis are more likely to be white, non-Hispanic, female, and are more likely to live in more affluent areas with greater access to health care. A RECOVER study also demonstrated Black patients were more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes, pulmonary embolism, and headaches, and Hispanic patients had higher risk of diabetes and dyspnea, when compared to white patients.
"This new site for the Center for Post-COVID Care is integrated within our large primary care clinic, allowing us to seamlessly integrate long COVID care within a familiar environment for patients and remove barriers to care frequently experienced by marginalized populations," says Juan Wisnivesky, MD, DrPH, Drs. Richard and Mortimer Bader Professor of Medicine at Icahn Mount Sinai, a clinical epidemiologist who is one of the primary leads of the RECOVER adult cohort study at the Mount Sinai site and one of the project's leaders.
"Mount Sinai is proud to say we were first to recognize the immediate need for providing post-COVID care to patients experiencing long-term symptoms and we look forward to expanding access to care in Manhattan for this growing patient population," says Zijian Chen, MD, Director of Mount Sinai's Center for Post-COVID Care. "To date we have treated thousands of post-COVID patients and we continue to lead the way in understanding how symptoms evolve and how to treat them. We encourage those experiencing symptoms after COVID-19, including high-risk minority groups, to seek out care as we try to close a disparity gap."
Mount Sinai's Center for Post-COVID Care also has offices in the following locations:
Mount Sinai-Union Square, 10 Union Square East, 2HJ
Mount Sinai Doctors-Ansonia, 2109 Broadway at 74th Street
Mount Sinai-Internal Medicine Associates, 17 East 102nd Street, third floor
