News

Working with the Center for Community Health Navigation at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Dr. Anil Lalwani and others have built a partnership to assist families of newborns and infants diagnosed with hearing loss in the Bronx and Northern Manhattan. That program, the Community Hearing Health Collaborative to Meet the Needs of Children with Hearing Impairment, was recently awarded a three-year, $875,000 grant by the Oberkotter Foundation.

With increased activity taking place on the Manhattanville campus and streetscape improvement work nearing completion, Columbia University sought a partner that would support maintenance services along 125th Street. The Harlem 125th Business Improvement District (BID) was officially awarded the contract in late spring to maintain the perimeter of the Manhattanville campus. The contract will go into effect once the corridor has officially been placed under Columbia’s jurisdiction.

Columbia University’s Wellness Center serves as a hub for members of the community to take advantage of free point-of-care services like blood pressure and cholesterol screenings. Other services include an open referral system, as well as assistance in health insurance enrollment with the New York State of Health marketplace by certified application counselors. The Columbia Wellness Center is focused on becoming a community space where individuals from West Harlem and beyond can create and engage in positive experiences surrounding the topic of health and wellness.

Until recently, someone in a wheelchair or with limited mobility trying to enter Havemeyer Hall had to detour through the Northwest Corner Building 300 yards to the north, take an elevator to the ninth floor, and then follow a 200-foot walkway through Chandler Hall to arrive, at last, at Havemeyer. Whew.

As of this March, a newly installed ramp leads to an accessible entrance 30 feet west of the building’s main door, making this labyrinthine route a thing of the past. It is the University’s latest disability access project, part of a multiyear initiative to adapt the Beaux Arts campus of the 20th century to the accessibility needs of the 21st.

Disconnected youth, more appropriately known as “opportunity youth,” are a unique population with a unique set of needs to match. By definition, opportunity youth are 16–24 year olds who are neither in school nor working. Classifying this special group using the term “disconnected” may lead one to believe that these young people are off the grid, hard to find, and completely lacking linkages to resources. Contrary to this belief, youth dealing with disconnection are actually—and at times unknowingly—connected to supports through varying degrees of separation. The term “disengaged” would more accurately describe these young people, and when the right strategy is employed, the chances of reengaging them increase greatly.

Next month, Columbia University will move forward with the installation of a new Public Safety Guard Booth on the south side of West 120th Street, just east of Broadway.  A Public Safety Guard Booth situated at the curb has been of interest since the completion of the Northwest Science building.  Columbia’s Office of Public Safety began the approval process early on and has obtained support from the 26th Precinct, Community Board 9 and the NYC Dept. of Transportation. 

The Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons (VP&S) at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) announced today the creation of the Office of Community Service Programs to expand the college's commitment to community service in Washington Heights and Inwood, other areas of upper Manhattan, and parts of the Bronx.

The Obama Foundation has selected the Columbia University Center for Oral History Research to produce the Obama Presidency Oral History, a comprehensive account of an historic American presidency that will serve as an invaluable resource for scholars, students, and members of the public.  The project will be led by Principal Investigator Peter Bearman, Director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics (INCITE), along with Co-Investigators Mary Marshall Clark, Director of the Columbia Center for Oral History Research, and Kimberly Springer, Curator of Columbia’s Oral History Archives, and it will be advised by a board (listed below) of distinguished scholars and public figures, which I will chair.

I am pleased to announce my appointment of Dr. Rui Costa, Professor of Neuroscience and Neurology, to Director and CEO of the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute.  Rui joined Columbia University in 2016 and has served the Institute as Associate Director and CEO for the last two years.  His leadership in this role has been vital, and we are fortunate he has agreed to take the helm of the Institute, along with its inimitable founding Codirectors, Drs. Richard Axel and Eric Kandel, as the Institute enters its next era.

This year’s Columbia University Career Expo held on April 2 took over the entire lobby of The Forum at its Manhattanville campus. Representatives from numerous University schools and departments, including the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, welcomed the local community to share information about employment opportunities.  

Approximately one year after the April 2018 announcement of the Cloud–Enhanced Open Software-defined Mobile-Wireless Testbed for City-Scale Deployment, or COSMOS project, members from the research team organized the first COSMOS community stakeholder meeting. These stakeholder meetings are intended to facilitate communication, transparency and meaningful engagement between the community and the COSMOS team.

Columbia University was honored as one of the New York Blood Center (NYBC) winners of the 2019 New York Mets College Blood Donor Championships! The University partners with the New York Blood Center in hosting life-saving blood drives across the various campuses during spring, fall, Black History Month, summer and new student orientation. 

Columbia University’s School of Social Work has been awarded $86 million over multiple years (pending availability of annual funds) from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health, to support research intended to reduce opioid deaths across New York State. Nabila El-Bassel, University Professor and the Willma and Albert Musher Professor of Social Work, and her colleagues secured this major funding based on their community-focused public health interventions. “We are planning a rapid public health response to the current opioid epidemic in New York State, focusing on policy and system changes by working with the criminal justice system, health care organizations, emergency rooms, schools, and drug treatment programs,” she said.

Chris Pellettieri is on a mission to carve out a new generation of artistry. Forever set in stone. "Stone carving is an ancient tradition that goes back thousands of years, before the United States, before Christianity," Pellettieri said. "Methods and techniques that were built up over all those years." Pellettieri believes he is one of only a handful of trained stone carvers in New York. "Everyone knows what the product of the stone carving tradition is, but hardly anyone knows what the activity looks like or what goes into doing it," Pellettieri said.

I am very pleased to announce my appointment of Nabila El-Bassel, the Willma and Albert Musher Professor of Social Work, to the rank of University Professor, our highest academic honor. A tireless leader in the fields of global public health and social work, Professor El-Bassel has dedicated her career to improving the lives of people who have too often been overlooked or neglected.  Her landmark scholarship focuses on behavioral and social sciences approaches to addressing substance use, HIV/AIDS, and interpersonal violence within marginalized communities.  She is one of the nation’s foremost experts in these areas and a pioneer in designing sophisticated and innovative gender-based interventions, many of which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have identified as models and best practices, and which have revolutionized prevention and treatment of stigmatized conditions across the United States and the world.  Currently, she is leading community and system-based research to address the opioid epidemic in New York State.