Jack and Susan Rudin Fund up to Ten New Urban Health Researchers at Academy

NEW YORK CITY, July 17— Jack and Susan Rudin have made a generous donation to The New York Academy of Medicine to fund up to 10 new urban health researchers over the next five years.

The Academy received the first of five annual grants this month to create the "Jack and Lewis Rudin Program in Urban Health." Academy President Dr. Jeremiah A. Barondess will select outstanding researchers each year to join the Academy and investigate compelling issues in urban health, beginning this fall.

The Rudin Scholars will produce new insights, programs and interventions related to bettering the health of urban populations in New York City and nationwide. "The idea is, these scholars will bolster and give rise to important intervention efforts. This is a visionary contribution to the Academy and to the health of future New Yorkers," Barondess said.

Jack Rudin is chairman of Rudin Management Co., one of the city’s largest real estate builders, owners and managers, and he has been a generous supporter of the Academy over the years. Rudin provided early and important support toward the creation of the Academy Center for Urban Epidemiologic Studies, which studies health issues among low-income urban populations. He also established the Academy’s annual Lewis Rudin Glaucoma Prize, an award for the most outstanding glaucoma work published each year.

The Rudin Scholars will be appointed across a variety of health disciplines in order to help actualize the Academy Forward Plan and strengthen its interventional programs in urban health. The Plan is a five- to ten-year strategy to broaden the Academy focus on urban health research and to reduce health disparities in urban populations. Programs to improve health status, reduce disease, prepare for urban disasters, and improve access to and quality of health care are all emphasized in the Forward Plan.

The Rudin family has a long tradition of service and philanthropy at the Academy and in New York City, including endowments at universities and institutions throughout the city, funding student internships and scholarships, professorships and lecture series. In addition, Jack and Lewis Rudin were the first sponsors of the New York City Marathon, among the world’s most cherished running competitions. The Marathon trophy is named for their father, Samuel Rudin, who was a devoted marathoner.

Dr. Barondess recalled that after a visit to the Terence Cardinal Cooke Center in East Harlem, where numbers of Huntington’s disease patients were being cared for, Mr. Rudin donated funds to help support the Huntington’s disease unit at the facility. The unit remains the only dedicated Huntington’s disease facility in the tri-state area.

"He’s a very generous person with a heart that’s very soft," Barondess said of Rudin, a decorated World War II hero. "He is devoted to this city and the welfare of its people."

The Rudin Scholars program will enable the Academy to recruit a new wave of researchers and to more thoroughly pursue urban health initiatives. "It is going to broaden our efforts in urban health by extending the capacities of every division and center in the Academy," Barondess said. "I’d like to bring important new perspectives and talents to what we’re doing."

Jack Rudin is a board member of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and a Trustee of the George C. Marshall Foundation, whose mission is to promote leadership qualities embodied by this soldier-statesman. Rudin has been involved with numerous service organizations including the Boy Scouts of America and the New York City Commission on the Homeless. Both he and his wife, Susan, serve on the board of the Hereditary Disease Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the cure of Huntington’s and other genetic diseases.

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Posted on July 17, 2003

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Contact:
Andrew J. Martin
Director of Communications
The New York Academy of Medicine
1216 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York 10029
212-822-7285
amartin@nyam.org

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