New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Sunday that the city will open wellness rooms at two NYC Health + Hospitals/Gotham Healthto provide support and resources to health care workers.
An anonymous donation of $100,000 will fund these spaces in NYC Health + Hospitals/Gotham Health Belvis Y Cumberland. These essential wellness spaces will provide respite and support for healthcare workers who have worked in some of New York City’s hardest-hit neighborhoods during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The new rooms, expected to open later this year, will provide a quiet place for frontline workers to recharge, de-stress, recover and emphasize the importance of taking a break and taking care of yourself during the workday. .
These rest rooms are part of the program Helping Healers Heal (H3) of the health system. H3 is a peer support program that was expanded to become a holistic preventive and proactive wellness program during the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure emotional, environmental, intellectual, financial, occupational, physiological, social well-being and spiritual of the employees.
H3, in partnership with the NYC Health + Hospital Office of Behavioral Health, is available to all employees and is intended to help identify and manage distress, as well as assist staff in building resilience, while helping to utilization of recovery and support resources to cope services.
Wellness rooms provide staff with the opportunity to take a break and participate in wellness activities such as mindfulness, peer support and wellness events to allow thoughts and feelings to be expressed and shared verbally and non-verbally using healing powers of creativity and art. The wellness rooms are an established space for peer engagement for frontline staff to share their experiences in a safe environment with other staff who were experiencing similar stressors with the intention of creating greater awareness of support resources.
“Our frontline health care workers and first responders have kept New York City safe during the past two years of this pandemic and this generous donation will ensure these heroes have the support and resources they deserve to recharge and continue to serve New York City. thousands of New Yorkers,” said Mayor Adams. “I thank this anonymous donor for recognizing all that our healthcare heroes have done and our first responders for putting their lives on the line every day.”