SUNY Upstate Medical University’s new president will be holding a series of symposiums to look for solutions to issues that face health care providers in central New York. Dr. Danielle Laraque-Arena hopes a studying issues like poverty and mental health can help the medical community deal with them.
"Help me succeed in connecting us in a joint purpose in improving lives. Our region is small enough so that anonymity is not a problem. We can know each other and learn to problem solve together,” said Laraque-Arena.
Laraque-Arena, who was officially installed as Upstate Medical University’s seventh president on Friday, says only the community working together can solve problems. She says central New York is surrounded by bitter statistics that need attention.
"A concentration of poverty. An epidemic of drug use. An epidemic of penetrating trauma, where, each week, we witness the loss of destruction of life, lives lost to violence, homicide, suicide and caught in the crossfire,” she said.
Themes of some of the seminars include eradication of poverty, gender and equity in medicine, and mental health care for all segments of society