Image caption: 2016 Tisch Prize Recipients (left to right) Harold Holzer, Director, Roosevelt House; Lilliam Barrios-Paoli, Special Advisor to the President of Hunter College; Laurie M. Tisch, President, Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund; Jennifer J. Raab, President, Hunter College; Phyllis Sperling, Co-Founder, Bloomingdale Aging in Place; David Reich, Co-Founder, Bloomingdale Aging in Place; Caitlin Hawke, Co-Chair of Activities, Bloomingdale Aging in Place.
Hunter College is seeking nominations for the seventh annual Joan H. Tisch Community Health Prize. This award was created to recognize one individual and one nonprofit organization in the New York metropolitan area for outstanding accomplishment in the field of urban public health. The nominee’s work should be focused on improving urban public health in areas such as: reducing health disparities; obesity/diabetes/nutrition; chronic disease prevention and management; environmental health; HIV/AIDS; health problems associated with poverty; healthy aging; mental health; substance abuse and addiction; public health policy and advocacy; and access, financing, and quality of care.
Made possible with support from the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, the award is named to honor New York City resident Joan H. Tisch and her humanitarian activism in health care and social services. Each recipient receives a $10,000 award. When presented to an individual, $5,000 is payable to the initiative the person is being honored for or to the organization he/she is affiliated with, and $5,000 is for personal development.
Melony Samuels, Founder and Executive Director of Bed-Stuy Campaign Against Hunger, the inaugural 2010-2011 individual recipient, notes:
“Receiving the Joan H. Tisch Community Health Prize is an invaluable honor; it’s an investment in the community and our organization and the returns are much greater than its monetary value. The Prize has raised the profile of our organization, providing long-term benefits and support from donors and other interested parties.”
Echoing this sentiment 2014 Prize winner Robert Cordero offers a glimpse of just how significant of an impact the Prize had on not only his career, but on the larger NYC public health community:
“A new partnership developed when I made an invaluable connection at the award ceremony with the Executive Director of Callen-Lorde Community Health Center that resulted in the formation of a groundbreaking venture to build a co-located LGBT-focused health center in the South Bronx with my former nonprofit agency BOOM!Health. The $1.3 million health center is now open and the collaboration is the direct result of the brilliance of the Joan H. Tisch Community Health Prize in brining attention and interconnection to nonprofits and community leaders who are focused on serving the most under-served communities in New York City.”
Eligibility criteria and nomination requirements are outlined in the two PDF files below (Nomination Guidelines and Nomination Form). We invite you to submit nominations by March 23, 2017. Renominations will be accepted; for information on the renomination process, please refer to the FAQs on our website.
A committee consisting of Hunter College faculty, health experts, and policy specialists will select the two prize recipients, and an award presentation will be held in Fall 2017. For further information about The Joan H. Tisch Community Health Prize, please email us at tischprize@hunter.cuny.edu or visit the Joan H. Tisch Legacy Project pages on our website.
Nomination Form 2017 (PDF)
Nomination Guidelines 2017 (PDF)
For more information, contact: tischprize@hunter.cuny.edu.
