Who we are
We are former employees of the Arnhold Institute for Global Health (AIGH) at Mount Sinai. We are physicians, public health practitioners, administrative assistants and project managers.
During our employment at AIGH we experienced workplace discrimination that irreversibly damaged our careers and personal lives. Our attempts to address these issues through Mount Sinai’s internal processes failed due to leadership’s refusal to hold the perpetrators accountable. We found ourselves left with no option but the legal route to have our voices heard.
In 2019 we filed a federal complaint against Mount Sinai for sex, age and race discrimination. Since then we have heard from hundreds of female and minority healthcare workers from Mount Sinai and beyond about the unsafe and inequitable work environment they face every day. In 2022, four plaintiffs who were dismissed from the original case filed a new complaint in NY State court.
We continue to use our legal cases and our advocacy work to demand a change in institutional culture and processes that will benefit ALL healthcare employees.
To learn more about our case, advocacy activities and upcoming events, see below. You can listen to this Gritty Nurse podcast for an overview of our story, and click below to receive updates and join our efforts.
Advocacy and Activism
New Legislation for Gender and Race Equity in Healthcare
We work on the legislative front to change the healthcare environment, because we know that toxic workplaces not only harm healthcare workers, but they impact patient outcomes.
On Sept 30th, 2020, we stood with Public Advocate Jumaane D. Williams, City Council Member Helen Rosenthal, and representatives of Congressman Adriano Espaillat’s office and the East Harlem Preservation organization for a press conference highlighting the urgent need for gender equity in medicine and celebrating the introduction of a bill to create a Gender Advisory Board for NYC - learn more here and see a news clip here.
We are now working on state level legislation to protect employees and patients against discrimination and retaliation
Our proposed New Safe Healthcare for All Accountability Bill includes two components:
Transparent Data Collection and Sharing: A mandate for healthcare and academic medical institutions to collect data on discrimination and harassment from their employees, trainees and patients, and to provide this data to agencies such as the NYS Department of Health for release to the public.
Safe Reporting: A mandate for healthcare institutions to provide independent, third-party reporting systems, to ensure that their employees, trainees and patients have a safe and confidential way to report incidents of discrimination and harassment without fear of retaliation by the institution.
WE need the support of your organization to get this legislation passed!
CLICK HEre To learn more and to sign on as a coalition partner
Marching for Women Workers
March 6, 2022
On March 6, 2022, Equity Now joined women workers from across the five boroughs to march for the rights of female and minority workers. Our Equity Now team spoke outside Mount Sinai Union Square about the harassment and discrimination that women in medicine face daily, the unacceptable gap in salary between male and female physicians, and the lack of institutional action to create equitable and safe environments for women - despite the fact that they constitute 76% of our healthcare workforce.
Equity Now stands in solidarity with the Undocumented Women’s Fund, and marginalized and minority workers everywhere in demanding just, safe and equitable working conditions for all.
Statement in Support of Harvard Students…
February 17, 2022
As plaintiffs in an ongoing gender discrimination lawsuit against the Mount Sinai Health System, we recognize the immense courage, strength and determination that it takes to speak out against a major academic institution and demand accountability for its failures. We offer our support to Margaret Czerwienski, Lilia Kilburn and Amulya Mandava as they take on this battle against Harvard University, and hope that their actions will empower others to call for greater justice and safety in their own places of learning.
Read more….
Demanding Accountability
In December 2019, students, faculty and members of the public protested outside Mount Sinai to demand answers, action and accountability from Mount Sinai leadership. Our demands were simple - for Mount Sinai to meet its responsibility to provide equitable, safe and humane working environments for women and every employee, trainee and patient.
In the news…
New Complaint Filed in NY State Court
Oct 24, 2022
In January 2022, 4 of our 8 plaintiffs ( Holly Atkinson, Anu Anandaraja, Humale Khan and Mary Caliendo) were dismissed from the original federal case that was filed in 2019. Today we filed a new complaint against Mount Sinai, Dean Charney, Prabhjot SIngh, David Berman and Bruno Silva in NY State Court.
The state case claims are consistent with our federal case - discrimination on the basis of sex, age, race, nationality and religion. The new complaint also offers more insight into the mistreatment and the abusive working conditions that the plaintiffs each experienced.
Click here for the press release about the new State Complaint.
Click here to read the State Complaint.
The four plaintiffs remaining on the federal complaint, (Stella Safo, Amanda Misiti, Geraldine Llamas and Emilie Bruzelius) continue to fight for justice in that arena - the federal case is currently in discovery and will hopefully progress to depositions within a few months.
It has been a long road, but the plaintiffs remain united and all the more determined to take the fight as far as they can go. Through their advocacy and their legal cases they continue to hold healthcare institutions accountable, and they are gratified that Mount Sinai now has two court cases to contend with.
Judge greenlights federal discrimination case
On Jan 20, 2022, after 2 and a half years, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled on the initial motions in our federal court case against the Mount Sinai Health System - and it's a win!
The Judge found that several of the plaintiffs had pleaded "sufficient claims" in our complaint of sex, age and race discrimination - this means the case against Mount Sinai will proceed and so will our pursuit of justice.
The bad news is that Judge Broderick granted Mount Sinai's motion to dismiss four of our eight plaintiffs from the case, largely on technical grounds including statute of limitations. However, we are not giving up - many of the claims can be refiled invoking New York State and City law, and we are also exploring the possibility of appealing some aspects of the ruling.
We are thrilled that our bid to hold Mount Sinai accountable through legal channels is moving ahead, but we are also reminded how challenging it can be for women, gender minorities and BIPOC to achieve justice in this system.
We will continue to fight until justice prevails. Read this press release for more info.
Media Coverage
Listen to Anu Anandaraja and Stella Safo on the Voices in Medicine Podcast where they discuss the Sinai case and practical tips to protect yourself from gender discrimination within the workplace. - Listen Here
“It’s a very well-kept secret," Roberta Gebhard, the former president of the American Medical Women's Association (AMWA), told Yahoo Finance. “We find ourselves trying not to poison our young when they’re coming up. We try and educate them on what to do if you find yourself in a position where you’re either being sexually harassed or you’re being bullied, to take really good notes. Document the date, the time, who was there and who witnessed it, and what exactly happened on an ongoing basis." - Yahoo Finance
New York City Council, after learning details of the legal case against Mount Sinai, passes legislation that requires the Department of Health to create an advisory board to study racial and gender discrimination in hospitals and its impact on patient care and workplace conditions for the staff, and calls on New York State to require implicit bias training at medical schools. - CBS New York; PIX11 New York
“Now, a key aspect of this Board is that it can’t be controlled by hospital and medical school leadership in NYC. That could be like putting the Cookie Monster in charge of a cookie jar defense system. The Board members won’t be CEOs of hospitals, Deans of medical schools, or someone hired by such leaders. Just because people have the word “equity”, “inclusion”, “unity”, or “help me, help you” in their titles doesn’t guarantee that it’s necessarily their goal or motivation. Instead, members will have to be completely independent from health care institution leadership and really represent the people whom the board is trying to protect.” - Forbes
We believed that our hard work and years of service to the institution would protect us and allow us to be measured on our merits. Instead we struck the “iceberg of sexual harassment,” and it sank our careers. - STAT
September 30, 2020 Press Event of in honor of Women in Medicine Month - WMBC-TV
One of the hopes is a State colleague will pick this bill up and institute a similar bill for New York State, “ said Rosenthal…Until such changes occur, how many more people will either suffer in silence or face retaliation when speaking up about discrimination and harassment? And how in turn could this affect you and other patients? - Forbes
Council Member Helen Rosenthal, Chair of the Committee on Women & Gender Equity, introduced legislation to establish a Gender Equity Advisory Board for New York City’s hospitals. - Harlem World Magazine
One Night at Mount Sinai Aja Newman went to the emergency room for shoulder pain. Her doctor was a superstar. What’s the worst that could happen? - New York Magazine
Seven current and former female employees have sued officials at a global health institute that is part of the Mount Sinai Health System’s Icahn School of Medicine in New York City, claiming age and sex discrimination. They claim the medical school’s dean, Dennis Charney, hired an underqualified man to direct the center, and allege that the director then drove out women who were in their 40s and older and preferentially hired younger men. An eighth plaintiff on the lawsuit, a man, claims discrimination based on race, religion, and national origin. - Science
Singh managed to cement his status as Charney’s protégé as he turned AIGH into an unhappy and tumultuous workplace, particularly for women. – Forbes
"This was not just a normal office disagreement about goals or methods," the document says. "Dr. Singh publicly disparaged the competence of women in senior leadership and made their working lives miserable until they were finally forced out." - Crain’s New York
Singh is also accused of doing nothing to curb disturbing behavior by other Mount Sinai employees, including Bruno Silva, who allegedly “regularly called women ‘bitches’ and ‘c—ts.’ ” - New York Post
“An academic leader at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai said he is stepping down from his leadership role following a lawsuit alleging age and sex discrimination. But he will remain on the faculty in a new role. Dr. Prabhjot Singh, director of the Arnhold Institute for Global Health and chairman of the department of health system design and global health, said the decision to leave those positions was his own.” - Crain’s New York
In our own words…
On October 14, 2020, Dr. Anu Anandaraja resigned from the Mount Sinai Health System after 18 years of service there. Her powerful Letter of Resignation lays out the race and gender dynamics that drover her out, and that continue to harm women and BIPOC employees and students at Mount Sinai every day.
Calling out the iceberg of harassment
Our courageous plaintiffs Dr. Atkinson, Dr. Anandaraja and Dr. Safo write about the phenomena of gender harassment in medicine and it’s disastrous and often overlooked impact on women’s careers across academic and clinical medicine.
“We know that if we do not speak out about the everyday acts of discrimination that are all but normalized in our culture, then heinous acts of violence like Aja experienced are given space to occur. And when we do speak and we are ignored, it is our responsibility to speak again and again, more and more loudly, until we are heard and action is taken.”
Have you experienced or witnessed discrimination or other misconduct at Mount Sinai?
Contact our legal team
Please consider contacting our legal team, at JMcAllister@mcolaw.com or (518) 633-4775. Please note that doing so will not automatically create a confidential attorney-client relationship between you and them, but if you consult them seeking guidance on a potential legal matter or on whether you should engage an attorney, it is likely to. The legal team may also put you in touch with us if appropriate and if you would like this.
Contact the plaintiffs
If you wish to share information with us (not our lawyers) and do not have concerns about confidentiality, you can email us at equitynowatmountsinai@gmail.com. Please be aware that if you contact us, and what you tell us is relevant to our lawsuit, we may need to disclose it to Mount Sinai if the litigation proceeds that far. You can also use Twitter to DM us at https://twitter.com/EquityNowSinai and we can arrange a way to connect. Thank you.
Are you a member of the press interested in learning more about the case?
We and our legal team are available for interviews and are glad to help. Please contact us via our legal team’s press department:
Anna Stileman
astileman@mcolaw.com
U.S. 212.433.3456
U.K. +44 (0) 20 3048 5947