ALBANY MED THE STORY // SPRING 2021 1

Shot of HopeAlbany Med Helps Guide Region Toward Brighter Day SEE PAGE 2

The STORYSPRING 2021

Albany resident Cynthia McLean, left, and Kaitlin Musto, RN.

6 Med Student Masters Global Health Problem 8 Mom’s Best Friend:

Birth Place Nurse June Schalit In This Issue 4 Heart Team Shepherds

6-Week-Old Through Surgery

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It seemed to happen overnight. Our lives changed dramatically. It was stunning. Nearly everything changed.

On March 9, 2020, Albany Med convened Incident Command—an operational structure that all staff are familiar with by now. The Medical Center had been studying the spread of coronavirus in other parts of the world. It was rapid and, within days, arrived in New York. As The Story went to press, Incident Command had just crossed the one-year mark of activation.

The cascade of events in that year’s time will be emblazoned in our memories forever—some as moments, others a blur of change, isolation and profound darkness. We carefully tracked rises and declines in Covid-19 hospitalizations and community cases. Holiday gatherings were canceled. Handshakes and hugs were awkwardly deferred. So became a “new normal” no one hoped would be permanent.

Then, a sign that it wouldn’t be. The first coronavirus vaccines were authorized for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Something other than the number of cases began to rise. It was hope.

“It was miraculous,” exclaimed Dennis Metzger, PhD, professor and chair of Immunology and Microbial Disease at Albany Medical College. “We needed to do this, and all efforts were put toward developing this vaccine as quickly as possible. It was tested on 70,000 volunteers, and safety and efficacy were promptly established.”

Hospital employees were the first to be vaccinated, according to state guidelines. The atmosphere at the clinics was uplifting—friends catching up, sharing thoughts of gratitude for the great minds of science. Cheer, at times, turned to tears—of happiness and a bit of closure. A resurrection of emotions some of us suppressed had surfaced—the kind we all at some point would have shared in the company of others. The vaccine promised we could again.

Anatoly Sosnovsky, RN, cared for Covid patients in the medical intensive care unit. He was standing in line on the first clinic day at Albany Med—Dec. 14, 2020.

“Ours was the first unit to be designated a full Covid ICU,” Sosnovky said. “It was physically and emotionally difficult. Even before the vaccine came to Albany Med, I knew I wanted to get it. The risk of being sick with Covid and potentially exposing someone is a greater

threat than any possible side effects. We are beginning to see fewer patients on my unit, and I think that’s because of the vaccine.”

As hospitals were beginning to vaccinate employees, New York State appointed 10 regional health care systems to oversee vaccine distribution. Albany Medical Center was chosen to lead the Capital Region Vaccine Network, charged with efficient and equitable distribution across Albany, Columbia, Greene, Rensselaer, Saratoga, Schenectady, Warren and Washington counties.

“A new day dawned in our fight against Covid,” said Albany Med President and CEO Dennis P. McKenna, MD, ’92. “The same staff that valiantly protected and healed the community from the virus would also administer the next phase. The task is monumental. But we made history on the front lines of the pandemic. We shall make history overcoming it.”

The vaccine network quickly convened a task force of local leaders in health care, business and the community to pool resources and strategize distribution. Within the network was also formed a Health Equity Task Force to focus on outreach, education and distribution to at-risk and historically

Leading Through the Darkness Into a New Day

Catherine Meyer, ’23, right, vaccinates a community resident at Koinonia Primary Care in March.

ALBANY MED THE STORY // SPRING 2021 3

VACCINE NETWORK

Capital Region

underserved populations. Data suggests minority populations have greater concerns about the vaccine and face physical obstacles to receive it.

“We want to give our communities an opportunity to talk about those concerns, so we can overcome those concerns with facts,” said Micky Jimenez, regional director of Capital District Latinos, who was vaccinated at Albany Med’s community clinic. “So many of us know someone who has been affected by Covid. It hits home. If people in a neighborhood see others who have received the vaccine, they see that no one will be left behind. With this, and respect for cultural sensitivities, we will build trust.”

Currently, supply and demand dictate the pace of vaccine distribution, but they have no effect on the network’s mission to vaccinate every Capital Region resident. In February, Albany Med and Albany County collaborated with the Center for Disability Services and the New York State Industries for the Disabled to allocate doses for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The vaccine network hopes the clinic—and the collaboration—serve as a statewide model for populations that may not be best served at large-scale distribution centers. The network has also received a pledge

of support from Albany Med, CDPHP, MVP Health Care, Irving Tissue, KeyBank, the United Way of the Greater Capital Region and Community Care Physicians, P.C., to underwrite a vaccine awareness campaign. The campaign urges everyone, “Don’t Hesitate. Vaccinate.”

The vaccine is safe. When enough of us receive it, we can remove the mask that hides the smiles we long to share and allow us to visit our relatives and friends, with the biggest hugs they have ever felt.

“To be a good citizen means to be protected from Covid-19,” said Internal Medicine Program Director Raymond Smith, MD. “Vaccination is the only way to stop the spread.”

— Matt Markham

Care for the Spirit During Covid-19As our medical staff gives their all to patients during the pandemic, so, too, does the Pastoral Care team, also on call 24/7/365 to provide spiritual and emotional support to patients, their families, visitors and employees. The department’s chaplains serve people of all faiths and those with no religious beliefs. In the early days of the pandemic, they introduced elements of “telechaplaincy” into their work, connecting patients with family outside the hospital, but their in-person presence never waned.

40% Rise in number of Pastoral Care visits charted between January 2018 and January 2021

0 Number of chaplains who have tested positive for Covid-19

⇧ A provider of spiritual and emotional support to employees as well as patients and visitors, Pastoral Care has seen a rise in the number of Albany Med staff who have sought help during the pandemic.

6 Number of hospital departments that partner with Pastoral Care to provide support to employees in emotional distress. They include Nursing and Social Work.

How Pastoral Care Serves Patients at Albany Med (January 2021)

CapitalRegionVAX.org• Facts about the vaccine• Distributions totals to date• Videos and pictures• Resources for providers and partners

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Triumphant Start for Tiny Heart Warrior, Thanks to Pediatric Cardiac Team

Albany Med’s Congenital Heart Program has long been known as a standout in New York State for patients with congenital heart disease (heart defects that are present at birth). Led by Neil Devejian, MD, one of the most experienced pediatric cardiothoracic surgeons in the nation, the program recently welcomed pediatric cardiac intensivist Adnan Bakar, MD, ’05, who was recruited to head up the Division of Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care, and fellowship-trained pediatric interventional cardiologist Jess Randall, MD.

The McNall family, of Wynantskill, was certainly grateful for this strong reserve of specialists when their lives turned upside down last fall.

Katelyn McNall, an elementary special education teaching assistant, was pregnant with their second son, Christopher, and things had been going beautifully until an echocardiogram, administered at the end of her third trimester, revealed that he had a condition called tetralogy of Fallot—a combination of four congenital heart defects.

“Suddenly, we were told we were going to need a whole team of doctors,” McNall said. Albany Med’s Maternal Fetal Medicine coordinators worked briskly to set up a meeting for McNall and her husband, Bryan. “The plan was to meet our team right away, so we could better understand what was happening. Then I went into labor. Everything happened so fast.”

This didn’t mean, however, that the heart team wasn’t on the job. “My first in-person conversation with Dr. Randall was in the delivery room,” McNall said. “He came in to let us know that they were tracking Christopher’s case very closely.”

Pediatric heart patient Christopher McNall

THE STORYVOL. 2 // NO. 1 SPRING 2021

The Story is published quarterly by the Department of Communications. Comments and story suggestions can be directed to Public Relations at (518) 262-3421 or albanymedcommunications@amc.edu.

ALBANY MED OFFICERS

DENNIS P. McKENNA, MD, ’92President and Chief Executive Officer

STEVEN M. FRISCH, MDSenior Executive Vice President for the Integrated Delivery System

VINCENT P. VERDILE, MD, ’84The Lynne and Mark Groban, MD ’67, Distinguished Dean of Albany Medical College and Senior Executive Vice President for System Care Delivery

FRANCES SPREER ALBERTExecutive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer

GEORGE T. HICKMAN Executive Vice President and Chief Information and Analytics Officer

FERDINAND J. VENDITTI, MDExecutive Vice President for System Care Delivery and Hospital General Director

ELLEN COSGROVE, MDVice Dean for Academic Administration

JOHN DePAOLAExecutive Associate Dean of Albany Medical College and Chief Administrative Officer for System Care Delivery

LOUIS FILHOUR, PhD, RNChief Executive Officer of Better Health for Northeast New York and Interim Chief Nursing Officer

NOEL HOGANSenior Vice President and Chief Compliance Officer

MATTHEW JONES, Esq.Senior Vice President and General Counsel

JAMES J. BARBA, JDPresident Emeritus

And he stayed until after Christopher was born.

“He was just great,” McNall said. “He came back and explained everything to us. He drew us pictures. I’m a teacher, so I love a visual. We felt a lot of relief. We knew what was ahead of us, and we felt reassured.” They were additionally heartened, she said, knowing they didn’t have to travel to a larger city to receive the highest level of care for their son. “One of the nation’s best pediatric cardiac programs was right here in Albany!”

After the McNalls took Christopher home, Dr. Randall saw him for office visits and kept a continual check on his oxygen saturation levels. Because of the structure of his heart, the blood it pumped out to the rest of his body was oxygen-poor.

Tetralogy of Fallot is characterized by a large hole between the left and right ventricles (the heart’s main pumping chambers). Another component of the defect is a narrowing at or beneath the pulmonary valve, which controls the flow of blood to the lungs. Surgery is the only effective treatment for tetralogy of Fallot. The long-term prognosis is excellent, though patients do require regular cardiac follow-up for the rest of their lives.

Because of the complexity of Christopher’s case, including some risk factors like underdeveloped lung arteries, Dr. Devejian determined that a preliminary shunt procedure would be the best first step.

“We trusted him,” McNall said. “We knew we were in good hands.”

For more than two decades, Dr. Devejian has cared for infants, children and adults with congenital heart

defects. He has been ranked among the top surgeons in New York State, based on rates related to his surgical outcomes, and he credits the strength of the team around him for the program’s success: pediatric specialists in cardiology, anesthesia, radiology and respiratory therapy; intensivists, hospitalists, OR techs, nurses, perfusionists and child life specialists.

At six weeks old, Christopher came through the shunt procedure very well. He recovered in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, where Dr. Bakar kept a close watch over him. “We have a special nursing staff for our heart patients in the PICU,” Dr. Bakar explained. “It’s kind of like a unit within a unit.”

“It’s an amazing team,” McNall said. “The doctors and caregivers just don’t leave those bay windows. You feel like there are always eyes on your little one. It brings you a lot of comfort.

Christopher left the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit on a triumphant note, wearing a onesie that said “Peace Out, PICU.” His parents are showering him with love and care so he is strong for his next surgery—a repair that will close a hole between the lower chambers of his heart and open up restricted blood flow to his lungs—and they’re inspired by his progress.

“He recently had an evaluation for development and behavior,” his mom said, “and there are no delays for his age. In fact, he’s above average for his age range. We are so proud of our brave little heart—and the phenomenal team who’s looking out for him.”

— Lauren MacIntyre

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From left, Drs. Adnan Bakar, Jess Randall and Neil Devejian.

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App-solutely Inspiring: Nevon Song, ’23, Is Creating a Bridge of Aid to East AfricaRoughly a year ago, a team of six medical students from Albany Medical College, co-led by Nevon Song, ’23, along with John Moon, ’20, Arun Chocklingham, ’20, Sara Silberstein, ’22, Peter Inglis, ’21, Sam Fordyce, ’21, and mentor Gary Siskin, MD, professor and chair of the Department of Radiology, faced off against a team from Yale School of Medicine. They were finalists in a competition hosted by the Society for Interventional Radiology (SIR) that challenged teams from medical schools across the country to come up with an innovative solution to a problem in global health.

Not only did Song and his team walk away with first prize for their idea—a medical-supply-tracking app designed specifically for use in hospitals and clinics with limited resources—they also started fielding phone calls almost immediately.

Physicians and panelists from the competition reached out. So did global humanitarian organizations like RAD-AID International. Everyone wanted to know the same thing: what would it take to put their idea into action?

“All of this coincided with the rise of Covid-19,” Song said. “It was clear to us, from the research we did, that these limited-resource sites in countries like Tanzania were being hard hit. Many were tracking their equipment supplies by hand. They would get overwhelmed, running into preventable shortages of equipment at the worst possible times.”

If all of this was happening on normal, business-as-usual days, Song wondered, what would happen during the pandemic?

The question inspired him to make a bold decision. “I decided to build the app out for real,” he said.

In May, Song started working with Road2IR, a global outreach organization with medical faculty and clinicians at institutions across North America, Tanzania and Rwanda. Over the summer, he began recruiting programmers, ultimately creating a team of more than 20 people across

Medical staff at Muhimbili National Hospital in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, using the Carebase app in March.

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Family-Inspired Professorship in Plastic Surgery

the U.S., all while balancing the demands of medical school. “A lot of the work was done in the witching hours,” he said.

This spring, the app, Carebase, will be released on Google Play where health care centers around the world will be able to download it. Carebase was launched to be piloted at the first ever accredited Interventional Radiology training program in Tanzania in September, and plans are now afoot to bring the app to Rwanda, Uganda and sites around the world.

Meanwhile, Song, in collaboration with Road2IR, is also creating a pipeline of donated and low-cost supplies from U.S. and Canadian hospitals and manufacturers that can benefit the limited-resource communities they are serving. The app helps track these items by scanning equipment labels, and Song and his team provide insights on what supplies are needed and how to optimally source them across their supply chain. Supplies are distributed to volunteers who ship and transport them.

Song said he has always been drawn to problem solving and service in medicine. Born in Albany, he is the son of two physicians—his mom is a hospitalist at Saratoga Hospital; his dad is currently doing research for the Department of Health at the Wadsworth Center—so he gets his talents honestly.

And while his primary focus is “training to be the best physician I can be,” he said, he will continue to keep pace with the app as well as his schoolwork. “There’s a real sense of community around what we are all trying to build together here,” he said. “It’s exciting.”

— Lauren MacIntyre

Three things motivated Jerome D. Chao, MD, FACS, and his wife, Katherine, to make a $1 million gift to Albany Med and they all had to do with family.

The founder of Chao Plastic Surgery, in Latham, Dr. Chao said he found himself thinking about who had helped him achieve the prolific career he enjoys today—a nearly two-decade run that included seven years of service to Albany Med as chief of the Division of Plastic Surgery.

First, he said, his parents—his late mother, Sun Faye Chao, and his father, Hsin Cheng Chao, MD—gave him inestimable support.

His wife and his children, Matthew and Madeleine, also made sacrifices (“this is especially true in medicine,” he said, “you’re not home a lot”).

And, finally, Albany Med, provided “the home that gave me my start in academics.”

To honor these profound forces, Dr. Chao and his wife established the Chao Family Distinguished Professor in Plastic Surgery.

“When people hear ‘plastic surgery,’ they often think of cosmetic surgery,” Dr. Chao said. “Much of the work being done at Albany Med is reconstructive—cleft and craniofacial surgeries for children, breast reconstructions and other interventions for cancer patients. Our gift supports teaching, research, clinical services and recruitment to help the plastic surgery team operate at their fullest potential.”

Ashit Patel, MD, FACS, chief of the division, holds the endowed professorship. “We’re deeply grateful for the gift, which is allowing us to grow as a division,” he said. As the current president of the New York State Society of Plastic Surgeons, Dr. Patel added, “the professorship reflects positively on the institution, as a whole, and helps relay that we have some great things happening here in Albany.”

— Lauren MacIntyre

Nevon Song, ’23

From left, Albany Med President Dr. Dennis P. McKenna, ’92, Dr. Jerome Chao and his children, Matthew and Madeleine, and Albany Med President Emeritus James J. Barba pose before the pandemic.

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Labor of LoveALBANY MED’S LONGEST-SERVING NURSE SHINES BRIGHT IN THE BIRTH PLACE

From a very young age, June Schalit, BSN, loved babies. “I was always fascinated with them, starting with my little brother, who was three and a half years younger than I was.” An avid babysitter before she reached her teens, Schalit jokes that her mother “had me on call.”

It was good training for a woman who would go on to be a nursing mainstay in Albany Med’s Labor and Delivery Department and, as a preceptor, prepare hundreds of nurses for successful careers in women’s health. Today, with 50 years of caregiving experience under her belt, Schalit is Albany Med’s longest-tenured nurse.

“My coworkers will sometimes ask me, ‘How come you’re still working?’ I’ll be 70 in June. I like to work,” she said. “I love the variety. Every day is different here.”

Schalit came to Albany Med in 1970 as a nursing assistant. She was 19 years old. “I started on the oncology unit,” she said. “My son was a baby at the time, and some of the patients I was caring for were at the end of life.” The experience, she said, gave her a crash course in the gravity of the human experience. “I learned so much.”

When an opening came up in the antepartum unit, Schalit made a move. Over the next several years she worked in both the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and Labor and Delivery—an area where she has stayed and spread her wings, serving in many roles, including assistant nurse manager, head of bereavement, and a longstanding member of the hospital Protocol and Ethics Committees.

She has seen The Birth Place transform into a very complex care center during her tenure. “We care for a lot of patients with high-risk pregnancies now,” she said. “We’ve become a referral center

for those moms, because of our specialists and resources.” And while she has been witness to plenty of other changes in birthing care over the years—better pain options for patients; a rise in breastfeeding; shorter hospital stays—the basics, she said, are still the same.

“Our patients still need support,” she said. “And we still rely on teamwork to bring them the best possible care.”

Schalit advises her nursing students to spend as much time as possible at the bedside with patients. “Be kind to everyone,” she tells them, “and don’t forget to include the significant other—the father, the partner or the friend—who is there with mom. There can be a lot of teachable moments, depending on what’s happening with the labor.”

Her advice to new moms?

“This probably sounds obvious, but try to get enough rest. You don’t have to be superwoman. When people offer to help, take it.”

The care Schalit has provided to patients over the years has often led to friendship. Her best friend is a former patient. “We bonded when I was taking care of her and, months later, we bumped into each other,” she said. “She invited me over to see the baby, I brought my son, and the rest is history.”

Recently, Schalit cared for a woman who had a “rainbow baby”—a child born after a miscarriage or infant loss.

“We know a patient’s history coming in, so I was sensitive to her needs and how she might be feeling,” she said. “She did great, and I was so touched when she reached out to me on Facebook later. She’s been sending me pictures of the baby. She told me she couldn’t have done it without me. That makes it all worthwhile.”

— Lauren MacIntyre

June Schalit, BSN