St. Luke’s University Health Network

Nurse-Family Partnership

St. Luke’s Nurse-Family Partnership program of the Visiting Nurse Association of St. Luke’s, connects local mothers living in poverty to a personal nurse, beginning in early pregnancy and continuing over the first 1,000 days of the infant’s life to assess and aid in quality of life issues.

Since its formation in Bethlehem in 2001, and expanded to Easton and Allentown in 2008, St. Luke’s Nurse-Family Partnership has enrolled more than 2,500 mothers and graduated 744 families from the program. First-time, low income mothers less than 28 weeks into their pregnancy are encouraged to apply for the program.

Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale recently visited St. Luke’s University Health Networks’ Nurse-Family Partnership. He stated that he “learned that there is hope” as he was shown how the innovative program helps prevent child abuse and build healthy families.

St. Luke’s Nurse-Family Partnership is the local chapter of the national non-profit Nurse-Family Partnership, and relies on public support and grant monies to positively impact quality of life issues for impoverished mothers and their new children.

Shirani, Vallabhaneni honored

Jamshid Shirani, M.D., was awarded the Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Award from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. He is the director of the SLUHN’s general cardiology fellowship program.

The award recognizes a program director who demonstrates ongoing innovation in medical education as well as successful programmatic outcomes.

St. Luke’s cardiology fellow Srilakshmy Vallabhaneni, M.D., will receive the David C. Leach award. The ACGME gives this award to honor residents, fellows, and resident/fellow teams and their contributions to graduate medical education.

DIEP update

St. Luke’s Plastic & Reconstructive Surgeons Lino Miele, M.D., who joined the practice in 2015, and Juan Carlos Martinez, M.D., who joined in September, are trained in plastic and reconstructive surgery. Also microsurgery experts, they perform deep inferior epigastric artery perforator breast reconstruction.

This advanced microsurgical technique rebuilds the breast lost to mastectomy by using tissue taken from another part of the patient’s body, usually the abdomen. Unlike other breast reconstruction procedures that use a patient’s tissue, with DIEP no muscle is moved or repositioned.

Dr. Martinez completed a microsurgery fellowship at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute in Columbus, Ohio.

Dr. Miele was trained in DIEP at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and completed National Institutes of Health sponsored postdoctoral research fellowship at Harvard Medical School.

School of Nursing state ranking

St. Luke’s School of Nursing ranks fifth out of 76 programs in Pennsylvania and first of all the nursing programs in the Lehigh Valley, according to www.RegisteredNursing.com.

The rankings are based on results from the National Council Licensure Examination-Registered Nurse board exam.

Established in 1884, St. Luke’s School of Nursing was the fourth nursing school in the United States. It remains the oldest, continuously operating school of nursing in the country.

Supplemental donor breast milk program

St. Luke’s University Health Network has partnered with Three Rivers Mothers’ Milk Bank, Pittsburgh, to provide donor breast milk to late pre-term and term babies who need supplemental feeding after birth.

The bridge program will be used in both Allentown and Bethlehem nurseries for babies who need extra help with feeding in the first few hours and days after birth until the mothers are able to sufficiently breast feed.

Three Rivers Mothers’ Milk Bank uses screened donors and pasturized milk for purchase and shiping to health care facilities across the country.

‘For Your SweetHeart’ partnership announced

St. Luke’s University Health Network has partnered with Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly and Company to deliver resources from For Your SweetHeart: Where diabetes and heart disease meet. The nationwide movement’s goal is to raise awareness of the critical connection between type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

A survey found more than half (52 percent) of adults with type 2 diabetes do not understand they are at an increased risk for heart disease and related life-threatening events, like heart attack, stroke or even death. Due to the complications associated with diabetes, such as high blood sugar, high blood pressure and obesity, cardiovascular disease, which includes heart disease, is a major complication and the leading cause of death associated with diabetes. Ten leading patient and professional advocacy organizations and a steering committee of eight leading medical experts (cardiologists, endocrinologists and primary care physicians) have also joined the For Your SweetHeart movement to further educate their communities about the link between type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Warren Hospital campus upgrade successful

Five years ago, Warren Hospital in Phillipsburg, N.J., was facing the possibility of closing due in part to debt, an underfunded retirement plan and no excess capital to allow facility upgrades.

Since Warren Hospital joined the St. Luke’s University Health Network, SLUHN has invested almost $90 million in patient friendly upgrades at the hospital’s main campus and satellite locations throughout Warren and Hunterdon counties.

SLUHN recently expanded the Warren Hills Family Practice in Washington, N.J., to include radiology, outpatient physical therapy services and specialty physician coverage. Patient rooms were re-designed and rebuilt; the Intensive Care Unit was replaced with a state of-the-art facility and the emergency rooms were upgraded. The Warren Campus has 3D mammography and the latest imaging equipment available in the SLUHN system.

Lehigh Valley Health Network

WHE at LVCH

Lehigh Valley Health Network has acquired the Weller Health Education Center following a formal RFP process initiated by the Center in 2015. Lehigh Valley Children’s Hospital was the unanimous choice of WHEC directors, foundation and staff.

The new program, Weller Health Education at Lehigh Valley Children’s Hospital, will provide more resources and accessibility to schools, parents and educators. Health education will be available for all grade levels including parent/teacher programs.

The Weller Center has been providing preventive, science-based health education programs for grades K-12 students for more than 32 years. For more information, visit lvhn.org or twitter.com/LVHN or facebook.com/LVHealthNetwork.

Annual meeting held

LVHN’s President and Chief Executive Officer Brian Nester, DO, MBA, FACOEP, reviewed the 2017 fiscal year on December 6. during the organization’s community annual meeting.

The health network’s Board of Trustees and about 200 community members met in the auditorium at Lehigh Valley Hospital- Cedar Crest.

Topics included the establishment of three new LVHN institutes, new technologies, innovations and services introduced in 2017 that make quality care through the health network more accessible and convenient. New facilities were opened, which give communities access to the care they need close to home.

Chang named chief of thoracic surgery

Richard S. Chang, M.D., has been named Lehigh Valley Health Network’s new chief of thoracic surgery. He specializes in using daVinci Xi surgical robots to remove patients’ tumors of the lung, chest and esophagus.

LVHN is the first, and currently the only, network in the area using this type of robot.

Chang will train other surgeons to use the Xi robot, the most exact device of its kind available.

He practices mindfulness meditation and martial arts. He earned a black belt in Wado-Kai Karate, which builds inner strength and calm, critical to interacting and empathizing with persons facing life-threatening conditions.

Pocono West services approved by board

The Lehigh Valley Health Network board of trustees has approved the timeline and services for the new Lehigh Valley Hospital–Pocono West campus along Route 715, Tannersville. The new campus is a result of a LVHN merger with the former Pocono Health System last January.