Press Release
August 2, 2007
Contact: Genene W. Morris
(973) 972-4564
morrisgw@umdnj.edu
UMDNJ - NJMS Student Organization
to host ‘ Ministers of Health Breakfast’
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NEWARK — With an eye toward enhancing the overall health of the communities of Newark, UMDNJ - New Jersey Medical School’s PINACLE student organization will host its third annual “Ministers of Health” Breakfast on August 3 to recruit local leaders to help spread valuable health information.
The “Ministers of Health” Breakfast will take place Friday, August 3, from 8:30 to 11 a.m. on UMDNJ -NJMS campus in Newark. Dr. Robert Johnson, the NJMS’ Interim Dean, and Dr. Maria Soto-Greene, the NJMS’ Vice Dean and Director of the Hispanic Center of Excellence, will deliver opening remarks.
Founded in 2005, PINACLE, (Partnership in Newark Advocating Community Leaders’ Empowerment) is a community outreach program organized by NJMS students that aims to educate and empower the community with useful and life-saving information about serious medical issues, such as hypertension and asthma that they can, in turn, share with their constituents. The “ Ministers of Health” Breakfast serves to encourage community leaders to take part in “PINACLE Institutes,” where they are provided information about disease prevention and treatment. Following the Institute training sessions, community leaders are then encouraged to host health workshops to share what they have learned with the community. PINACLE members attend the workshops to provide health screenings.
PINACLE executive director and fourth-year medical student Sarada Sakamuri explains that NJMS’ teaching hospital, University Hospital, provides top-notch care to patients, “but unless our patients recognize their symptoms and get to the hospital in time, we can't treat them. During PINACLE Institutes, we try to emphasize the importance of recognizing what symptoms are normal and what is a medical emergency.”
PINACLE is part of S.H.A.R.E. (Student Health Advocacy for Resource and Education), an NJMS student organization that promotes community outreach that includes a wide range of other programs from mentoring high school students to assisting a first-time mother in pregnancy-related care.
The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey is the nation's largest free-standing public health sciences university with more than 5,700 students attending the state's three medical schools, its only dental school, a graduate school of biomedical sciences, a school of health related professions, a school of nursing and its only school of public health, on five campuses. Last year, there were more than two million patient visits to UMDNJ facilities and faculty at campuses in Newark, New Brunswick/Piscataway, Scotch Plains, Camden and Stratford. UMDNJ operates University Hospital, a Level I Trauma Center in Newark, and University Behavioral HealthCare, a mental health and addiction services network.
