Nobel Prize of City Government Comes to HHC for Third Time in a Row

	Dona Leno Gordon

For the third year in a row, an HHC medical professional has won the Alfred P. Sloan Public Service Award, considered to be the Nobel Prize of City government. Donna Leno Gordon, a nurse practitioner from Coney Island Hospital who led the effort to formalize HHC’s corporate-wide palliative care program, has won the prestigious prize for 2012.

Since 1973, the Fund for the City of New York has annually presented the Sloan award to outstanding civil servants with extraordinary accomplishments and commitment to public service. In more than 20 years of service to Coney Island, Leno Gordon has redefined the standards of care across two disciplines. As a champion of palliative care, she has brought specialized services to chronically and terminally ill patients citywide. In the area of behavioral health services, under her guidance and leadership Coney Island established a nationally recognized psychiatric crisis prevention program.

Elva Rodriguez, an outstanding nurse practitioner in Women’s Health Services at Segundo Ruiz Belvis Neighborhood Family Health Center in the Bronx, won the award in 2011, and Dr. Julius R. Berger, professor, inventor and chairman at Kings County Hospital's department of dental and oral surgery, won the award in 2010.

April 2012