PROGRAM

The Joan H. Tisch Community Health Prize honors individuals and not-for-profit organizations for distinguished accomplishment in the field of urban public health. Made possible by support from the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, the Prize is a tribute to the late Joan H. Tisch in recognition of her lifelong humanitarian activism in health care and social services in New York City.

About the Honorees

Claudia Aristy (Hunter ’07), has been serving as the Director of the HELP Project and Children of Bellevue’s Reach Out and Read (ROR) Program since 2013. Ms. Aristy’s career at Bellevue Hospital began in 2000 as a bilingual parent educator. She helped develop the HELP curricula and was responsible for training bilingual HELP volunteers as well as translating and field-testing Spanish language materials. She currently serves on the National Board of Directors of ROR and on the Advisory Boards of Leyendo Juntos—a National ROR initiative—and ROR of Greater NY.

Service Program for Older People (SPOP), headquartered on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, was one of the first agencies in the U.S. to focus on meeting the mental health needs of older adults living in their communities. Over the five decades since its founding, SPOP has grown from a neighborhood agency serving aging and homebound Holocaust survivors into a citywide resource and a model for other organizations throughout the country. While its primary focus remains on patient-centered psychotherapy, its larger goals are to improve overall health and quality of life, address social isolation, and reduce unnecessary emergency room usage. SPOP is the only agency of its kind in New York City and serves more than 2,000 older adults each year.