{"id":1260,"date":"2013-04-12T15:16:01","date_gmt":"2013-04-12T19:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/?p=1260"},"modified":"2025-01-28T09:18:58","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T14:18:58","slug":"it-takes-a-village","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/2013\/04\/it-takes-a-village\/","title":{"rendered":"It Takes a Village"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mary Ann Christopher, M.S.N. \u201983, CEO of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, has dedicated her career to expanding community-based health care. She credits the College of Nursing with igniting her passion for focusing attention on society\u2019s most vulnerable.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

For Mary Ann Christopher, the nursing profession is part science and part art, but mostly a ministry.<\/p>\n

President and chief executive officer of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY)<\/a>, the nation\u2019s largest not-for-profit home health-care organization, Christopher and her organization provide a medical safety net for hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable.<\/p>\n

\"maryannchristopher\"<\/a>When Superstorm Sandy ravaged the metropolitan area, VNSNY went to work in New York\u2019s five boroughs immediately after the storm. With an inter-professional VNSNY team, Christopher set up a command post in the Saint Francis de Sales School in Rockaway, N.Y. \u2014 the team sitting at kindergarten desks to organize assistance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went door to door and found folks who couldn\u2019t come down,\u201d Christopher says. With pharmaceutical supplies airlifted and driven in, VNSNY distributed prescription refills and set up mini-clinics in various neighborhoods that had been devastated by flooding.<\/p>\n

The experience shows the power of community-based health care in physical, spiritual and emotional terms, she says, noting that her constant thought during the response to the storm was \u201chow blessed you are to be a health-care provider.\u201d<\/p>\n

Christopher\u2019s belief in the transcendence of the nursing occupation began in childhood, when as a young girl she watched her mother, the late Mary Lee, preparing to leave for work in her white uniform. Her mother, trained at the Holy Name School of Nursing in Teaneck, N.J., \u201calways talked with great reverence about being a nurse,\u201d Christopher recalls.<\/p>\n

The belief expanded with Christopher\u2019s undergraduate nursing training at Fairfield University and came into full recognition as a graduate student at Seton Hall\u2019s College of Nursing, where she specialized in gerontology and met \u201can extraordinary\u00a0set of mentors.\u201d<\/p>\n

The late Mary Jo Namerow, M.S.N. \u201978, a distinguished nursing scholar who taught in the Gerontological Nurse Practitioner program, instilled in Christopher a passion for\u00a0 finding ways to help society\u2019s most marginalized people.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I learned from her,\u201d Christopher says, \u201cwas to exquisitely tell the story of our patients. By that means, there is no public policy we can\u2019t influence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Leona Kleinman, also deceased, underscored what servant leadership is, she says, with a focus on gerontology and the disabled. Fran Bowers, Christopher\u2019s clinical instructor, worked alongside her in the Vailsburg section of Newark. \u201cShe taught me that we learn as much from our patients as we do from our training.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"maryannVNSNY144_188\"<\/a>But it is Phyllis Shanley Hansell, today dean of the College of Nursing, who has been the longest-lasting influence. Christopher credits Hansell, her professor in the nurse practitioner master\u2019s program, with teaching her \u201chow to blend the intellectual rigor of science with a mindfulness about the care of patients and a passionate belief in the sanctity of the nursing profession.\u201d<\/p>\n

For her part, Hansell remembers a stellar student who was passionate about nursing. \u201cMary Ann had an inner drive to make a difference for the elderly. She was extremely bright and scientific, yet very soft at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no wonder, then, that the two began to work together, first in nursing circles and then over Christopher\u2019s 29-year career at Visiting Nurse Association of Central Jersey, where as CEO for a decade she expanded a two-county provider into a statewide organization. She developed services such as home health care, hospice care, community-based prevention and outreach initiatives, clinics for the poor, and school-based health care.<\/p>\n

The Hansell-Christopher team has scored a number of New Jersey nursing firsts,\u00a0most recently winning a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant of about $5 million to support the annual study of 10 doctoral students at Seton Hall, the dean says. The New Jersey Nursing Initiative program aims to address the state\u2019s extreme shortage of nurses with graduate credentials who are prepared to teach, Hansell says.<\/p>\n

Addressing a different type of gap \u2014 community-based care for the elderly \u2014 was the reason Christopher joined the Visiting Nurse Association Health Group in Red Bank, N.J., having been recruited in 1985 to run a federal pilot program to find young mothers on welfare to take care of the chronically ill and elderly. A stunning success, it became the platform for the Medicaid waiver program, a federal-state effort to fund medical and long-term services for low-income aged, blind or disabled individuals, and families with children.<\/p>\n

Over the years, Christopher\u2019s connection to Seton Hall has become only stronger. She became a member of the School of Nursing\u2019s advisory board in 2000, and in 2010 joined Seton Hall\u2019s Board of Regents.<\/p>\n

Another University connection is her partnership with Dr. Kenneth W. Faistl \u201971, a family medical practitioner based in Colts Neck, who was her mentor and preceptor during her nurse practitioner training.<\/p>\n

Twenty years later, the doctor \u2014 certified also in geriatrics and addiction medicine \u2014 saw Christopher at a reception. \u201cAnd we got to talking about how we could work together on community health solutions for people outside the safety net, such as the uninsured or underinsured,\u201d Faistl says. \u201cAnd this began with the realization on my part that the Visiting Nurse Association she was heading was providing care to a lot of my patients.\u201d He was soon on her board.<\/p>\n

Another milestone in Christopher\u2019s career was a federal grant to build the Asbury Park Healthcare Center and, eventually, similar community healthcare facilities in Red Bank and Keyport, N.J. \u201cShe\u2019s one of those kinds of people who want to make things better in the world,\u201d Faistl says.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy career has very much followed a servant-leader model, a Catholic educational model, with the lens of being a ministry,\u201d Christopher says. \u201cFrankly, we\u2019re involved in some of the most sacred moments of our patients\u2019 lives, as well as some of the most sacred moments in the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bob Gilbert is a writer based in Connecticut.<\/cite><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mary Ann Christopher credits the College of Nursing with igniting her passion for focusing attention on society\u2019s most vulnerable.<\/p>\n

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