July 2024 Announcements

By Office of Communications & Marketing | Jul 1, 2024

Please note that the President’s Bulletin will be on hiatus for the summer;
we will resume publication after Labor Day.

Celebrating Muslim American Heritage Month

poster

During Muslim American Heritage Month, we recognize and celebrate the contributions of Americans with Muslim heritage to the United States from its founding through our present day. Many Muslim Americans pursue the American dream and offer numerous contributions to this country. Their service to the community and country is often motivated by the values of their faith, which are care, compassion, and concern for humankind. These are major themes found in the Quran.

For Muslim American Heritage Month, we are proud to feature Abdallah Saudi, M.D., MPH, FASPC, Assistant Professor, Physician Assistant at our School of Health Professions.

Join us as we proudly celebrate our students, faculty, volunteers, and staff with Muslim Heritage at Downstate.

Welcome Anya Razmi!

Razmi

We are pleased to introduce Anya Razmi, who joined our team, as the new TRANSPORT Program Assistant. With a nearly perfect GPA and Phi Beta Kappa honors, she combines academic excellence with a strong passion for user experience and technical writing. Anya has extensive experience across various administrative, communications, and public health roles. Her leadership at Yale's Writing Center has honed her skills in tutoring and event coordination. Anya also brings innovative insights to health technology startups, where she has designed marketing strategies and developed digital content. With competencies in multiple languages and programming tools, Anya is poised to make a significant impact in the intersection of technology, health, and communication.

Please join us in welcoming Anya to SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University. We are excited to have her on board and look forward to the contributions she will make to our programs.

Downstate Health Congratulates Our New Chief Experience Officer

Paulina Marfo Boateng We are proud to announce the promotion of Paulina F. Marfo-Boateng, RN, MSN, as our new Chief Experience Officer at Downstate Health. She will assist in facilitating organizational culture transformation through our Patient Experience Strategic Plan development, organizational alignment, and tactical execution with a focus on patient-centered care and employee engagement.

In her new role, she will provide leadership development, coaching and staff training to improve patient experience as well as employee engagement. Ms. Marfo-Boateng will monitor the clinical strategic plan’s effectiveness with extensive statistical expertise and metric analysis. She will also optimize patient-centered transformation by making our patients equal partners in planning their own care and develop initiatives to drive customer loyalty, business expansion, revenue generation, and service-line growth, to help increase our bottom-line. These responsibilities are only a few examples that Ms. Marfo-Boateng will execute along with her department.

Ms. Marfo-Boateng has proudly been with Downstate for over 23 years. She started with us as a Teaching and Research Clinical Nurse II and Staff Nurse, where she provided direct patient care on a 28-bed multiservice unit with acute to critical care for surgical, oncology, epileptic, and other medical conditions requiring care in general, ICU, and step-down settings. In her most recent role, she served as an Assistant Director of Nursing for Nursing Station 72/74. In this position, she effectively reported and identified risks, concerns, and ambiguities for clinical operations in her designated units and assisted in developing solutions. Another of her numerous responsibilities were to efficiently utilize creativity in developing quality and performance improvement programs, instructing staff, and implementing new and improved standards.

Ms. Marfo-Boateng received her Master of Science in Nursing right here at Downstate and also got her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Long Island University, also located in Brooklyn. She is a Professional Registered Nurse and her vast licenses and certifications include Advanced Cardiac Life Support, Pediatric Advanced Life Support, and Basic Life Support Facilitation Skills. She has also won numerous awards such as being named a Nursing Spectrum Nurse Excellence NY/NJ Regional Finalist and getting The Center for Front Line Leadership Future of Nursing Award, to name a few of her accolades.

Ms. Marfo-Boateng is located at the hospital in Room A1-381, and can be reached via e-mail at paulina.marfo-boateng@downstate.edu, by phone at 718-270-1111, and her mail stop is (MSC) 23.

Please join us in congratulating Ms. Marfo-Boateng on her new role at Downstate.

Downstate Welcomes Our New Associate Professor and Chair of Family and Community Medicine

George Downstate is proud to announce the appointment of Enitza George, M.D., MBA, MSAI, as our new Chair of Family and Community Medicine and Associate Professor. Dr. George finished her residency at Downstate, including serving as Chief Resident, and as a junior faculty member in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and Medical Director of Family Practice in Suite B at the hospital. She is thrilled to come back to Downstate and serve our patients in the community.

In her new role, she will provide executive leadership, direction, and administration in the Department of Family and Community Medicine in the College of Medicine. She will recruit, direct, and develop a faculty who, as a group, can provide the full range of primary care services. At Downstate Health, she will serve as our Chief for Family and Community Medicine and as the Chief Population Health Officer. She will be responsible for managing our affiliated hospital centers and partnering with other faculty to build a thriving practice that draws patients and referrals from throughout Brooklyn and beyond. Dr. George’s expectations for this role are to cultivate the practice at the new Empire Clinic (previously at Lefferts), and focus on value-based care and population health, leading Downstate Health’s effort to expand programs in primary care in all disciplines.

Dr. George has certifications from the American Board of Family Medicine and the American Board of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, where she received advanced certification. She also has additional certifications in Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Certification, Value-Based Leadership, and Certified Virtual Care Provider training, to name a few. She comes to us from Southcoast Health Network (SHN) in Fair Haven, Massachusetts, where she served as a Deputy Chief Medical Officer. In this role, a few of her numerous responsibilities were tied to supporting the institution’s Accountable Care Organization (ACO), serving as Medical Director of the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) and of the Commonwealth Care Alliance (CCA) delegation efforts. She was also co-chair of the healthcare equity committee focused on bridging disparities resulting from social determinants of health.

Dr. George earned her Doctor of Medicine (M.D.), graduating at the top 10% of her class at the Universidad de Panama in Panama City, Republic of Panama, and her Master of Business Administration (MBA), Magna Cum Laude, from Universidad Interamericana de Panama with a specialty in Strategic Management. She also received her Master of Science in Software Engineering (MS), graduating Summa Cum Laude, at the University of Advancing Technology in Tempe, AZ and a Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare (MS in AI) from the University of Alcala in Alcala, Spain. She has numerous publications in peer reviewed journals, e-books, abstracts, newspapers, on social media, and has earned many honors and awards such as the Entrepreneurial Excellence Award and being named one of the Top Physicians and Clinicians to Follow in Digital Health, to name a few.

At the College of Medicine, Dr. George will maintain and enhance Downstate’s residency program in primary care and our clerkship offering for medical students. She will also lead her faculty in the development of innovative clinical and basic research initiatives, both independently and in collaboration with other investigators on our faculty, other schools, and community organizations.

Dr. George is located in the Basic Science Building, Room #1-115, and can be reached via e-mail at Enitza.George@Downstate.edu, by phone at 718-270-4723, and her mail stop is (MSC) 67.

Please welcome Dr. George as a new member of the Downstate family.

Payroll and Human Resources Departments Have Moved

We are pleased to announce that the Payroll and Human Resources departments have relocated to our new offices at 271 Lenox Road.

Effective immediately, all payroll and HR-related inquiries will be handled at this new location. Our dedicated staff is ready to assist you with any Payroll or Human Resources needs during our regular business hours (see below for hours).

Please update your records accordingly and feel free to visit us at our new address:

271 Lenox Road,
Brooklyn, NY 11226
(Between Nostrand & Rogers Ave.)

Mail stop numbers are:
MSC#53 (Human Resources)
MSC# 1191 (Benefits)
MSC #10 (Payroll)

For Payroll inquiries, you can email the Payroll Department at Payroll@Downstate.edu or call the Payroll main number: (718) 270-1139. If you need to drop off physical documents to payroll, you may do so during our business hours 10am-3pm.

For Human Resources inquiries, you can email the Department of Human Resources at HumanResources@downstate.edu or call the Human Resources main number: (718) 270-1191. If you need to drop off physical documents to Human Resources, you may do so during our normal business hours: 8am-5pm.

Thank you.

ALERT- Construction Activity and Parkside Ave road closure from Monday, 7/1/24 to Friday, 7/5/24

There will be a PARKSIDE AVE. ROAD CLOSURE between New York Ave. and Nostrand Ave during the week of July 1^st through July 5^th. The construction activity will be occurring at the rear Parkside Ave. side of the 329 Clarkson Ave. property that is under construction (next to the 760 Biotech building).

Downstate Monthly Parkers at 324 Winthrop St. will be affected. That week is the July 4^th holiday week with typically lower lot use during this construction activity.

All 324 Winthrop St. Monthly and Daily Parkers will have its 324 Winthrop St. gate open for all entering and exiting vehicles
All 711 Parkside Ave. Downstate Monthly Parking customers: The construction contractor advised that upon driver’s request, the on-site construction staff at the road closure will allow parkers to enter the closed roadway to access the 711 Parkside Ave. lot. However, since vehicle traffic can be expected in the area, all 711 Parkside Ave. lot monthly parkers will be permitted to park in the 324 Winthrop St. lot during that week. To avoid the traffic at Nostrand and Parkside Ave. intersection, use the 324 Winthrop St. lot gate that will be open for all entering and exiting vehicles.

If walking to/from the Downstate main campus use the Winthrop St. to New York Ave. sidewalk path in order to avoid the construction site.

Telecommuting Extension

Please be advised that the SUNY Telecommuting Program, currently set to expire on June 30, 2024, has been extended by the Chancellor through June 30, 2025.

Attached, please find the SUNY Workplace Flexibility Policy (Telecommuting), Telecommuting Program Reminders for Supervisors, and Telecommuting Program Reminders for Employees.

Telecommuting Program Reminders for Employees

Telecommuting SUNY Workplace Flexibility Policy

Telecommuting Program Reminders For Supervisors

Please contact HumanResources@Downstate.edu should you have any questions.

Jamie Grecco
Vice President
Department of Human Resources

Ethics Training is for Everyone...

Colleagues,

Executive Law Section 94 now mandates all State officers and employees take live ethics training every two years, with refresher online training occurring during the non-live training year.

To assist us in increasing employee participation and compliance with this requirement, the Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government (COELIG) Training Team has openings available in July for agency-specific trainings. The dates are as follows:

Wednesday, July 17, 2024 from (10am-Noon)
- Register by Tuesday, July 9th
Wednesday, July 24, 2024 from (10am-Noon)
- Register by Tuesday, July 16th
Tuesday, July 30, 2024 from (1pm-3pm)
- Register by Tuesday, July 23rd

To register, please email humanresources@downstate.edu with the date of your choice by the deadline referenced above. We will confirm your registration and send you the link to join the meeting on the scheduled date.

Thank you and please let us know if you have any questions.

Changes in Parking at 225 Clarkson Avenue

Effective July 31, 2024, the 225 Clarkson Avenue lot will close to monthly parking due to an ending lease.

Next week, anyone who currently has monthly parking privileges will receive an electronic parking questionnaire. The Downstate Parking Office will utilize the responses from this questionnaire to reassign parkers to other locations. Parking reassignment will be based on your responses, as well as availability, and how long you have had monthly parking privileges.

The questionnaire is very brief and should take no more than 5 minutes to complete.

A personalized, one-time use questionnaire link will be sent to the e-mail address that you provided to the Parking Office.

The deadline for completing the questionnaire is Friday, June 28^th.

If we do not receive your responses by this date, we will assume that you no longer want monthly parking privileges at Downstate.

If you want monthly parking again in the future, you will have to contact the Parking Office and place your name at the bottom of the parking waitlist.

You can use the computers in the library if you do not have access to a computer.

If you have any questions, please send an email to ParkingSurvey@downstate.edu.

Fill Out Sodexo's Employee Cafeteria Customer Satisfaction Survey Today

sodexo Just scan the QR code or click here to complete the survey. All completed surveys will be entered to win meal vouchers,

10 winners will be selected each month.

This survey will help us get insight pertaining to your overall experience. The information provided will allow Sodexo to improve our services. Your feedback is anonymous and confidential.

your voice matters

Sodexo qe

Thank you in advance for participating.

Our Summer Youth Program is Back for 2024!

We are pleased to inform you that the University Hospital at Downstate six-week (SYEP) Summer Youth 2024 program will begin July 1, 2024.

A Summer Youth request form is attached. For information regarding clerical volunteer opportunities and internships, please feel free to contact Gem McCalman-Oxley SYEP/Volunteer Coordinator at 718-270-3241 or ext. 2844.

Request Form

Register Today For An Upcoming AVERT Active Shooter Training

AVERT, short for Active Violence Emergency Response Training goes beyond active shooter training by teaching emergency bleeding control techniques, warning signs of a potential aggressor, quick response in a violent situation, escape, evade, or attack in critical seconds during an event, and staff confidence needed to respond. University Hospital at Downstate is now a training center with 14 certified instructors that includes staff from Emergency Management, University Police, the HAZMAT team, and the ED.

Please RSVP by using the link below to register for an upcoming Active Shooter Training:

Event Address: University Hospital at Downstate
Exact location will be emailed after registration is complete
For more information, contact Jennifer Guzman at Jennifer.Guzman@downstate.edu
Register for an upcoming event here: https://downstate.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3Da7gRVrzTWnjzU