Photo credit: Insta_Photos
The City of New York will open wellness rooms at two NYC Health + Hospitals/Gotham Health clinics, providing support and resources to city health care workers. An anonymous $100,000 donation will fund spaces at NYC Health + Hospitals/Gotham Health Belvis and Cumberland. These essential wellness spaces will provide respite and support for health care workers who have served in some of the hardest-hit neighborhoods of New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic. The new rooms, expected to open later this year, will provide a quiet place for frontline workers to recharge, de-stress, heal, and emphasize the importance of taking a break and taking care of themselves during the workday. The announcement comes as Mayor Adams hosts a Super Bowl watch party for first responders from all five boroughs.
These respite rooms are part of the health system’s Helping Healers Heal (H3) program. H3 is a peer support program that was expanded to be a holistic proactive and preventative well-being program during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure employees’ emotional, environmental, intellectual, financial, occupational, physiological, social, and spiritual wellness needs were being addressed.
H3, in partnership with NYC Health + Hospital’s Office of Behavioral Health, is made available to all employees and aims to help identify and monitor distress, as well as to assist staff in resilience-building, while aiding the utilization of recovery resources and coping support services. Wellness Rooms provide staff the opportunity to take a break and engage in well-being activities, such as mindfulness, peer support, and wellness events to allow thoughts and feelings to be expressed and shared verbally and nonverbally using the healing powers of creativity and art. Wellness Rooms are an established space for peer engagement, for frontline staff to share their experiences in a safe environment with other staff members who were experiencing similar stressors with the intention to bring greater awareness to support resources.
New Yorkers seeking to support NYC Health + Hospitals can contact Philanthropy@nychhc.org.
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