Expanding Life's Possibilities for People in Need

Beth Abraham Family of Health Services ranks among the nation’s leading resources for long-term residential and community-based health care. A voluntary, nonprofit organization, Beth Abraham has made life better for tens of thousands of New Yorkers from all backgrounds and walks of life. It first opened its doors to the poor, chronically ill and disabled just after the First World War.

Created As a Home-like Alternative to Institutional Living

Named for the Talmudic scholar Rabbi Abraham Alperstein, Beth Abraham ("The House of Abraham") was founded by his socially conscious wife Bertha Alperstein. From her vision, a simple wood-frame house was erected as a safe haven for indigent Jews once confined to New York City’s hospital on Blackwell Island (now Roosevelt Island). With the help of a handful of determined women, she created a refuge for these men and women offering nutritious food, quality recreation and the best nursing care available.

Today, individuals and families challenged by illness and significant disability seek Beth Abraham’s expertise from far and wide. Throughout its history, the organization has initiated stimulating new residential environments and community-based supports helping people lead dignified lives.

From its early origins as a small residential home featuring a fine kosher kitchen, Beth Abraham now counts among the largest long-term care providers in New York State.

With more than 3,000 employees, Beth Abraham offers residential and community-based services built on decades of medical and rehabilitative experience in meeting long- and short-term care needs. Our clients and residents include:

• Young people permanently disabled by traumatic injuries
• Workers incapacitated in industrial accidents
• Musicians whose livelihoods have been interrupted by stroke or cardiac disease
• Retired educators and other lifelong professionals confronting disabling neurological conditions
• Chronically disabled men and women of all ages
• Men and women struggling against the deficits of Alzheimer’s disease, dementia and other disabling conditions of aging.

Wide-ranging, well-designed resources-- including housing, adult day healh care, home health care, skilled nursing, rehabilitation and music therapy, to name a new form the organization's core of services.

A Record of Innovation

Beth Abraham's history is rooted in enabling men and women of modest economic means-- and often few, if any, family and community supports-- to maintain their health and independence, both within their homes and in state-of-the-art residential settings.

It's novel initiatives include the Comprehensive Care Management (CCM) program, which is a medical, social and recreational resource for frail and elderly men and women. CCM's community-based centers, located in Manhattan's Chinatown, Harlem and other medically-underserved neighborhoods, act as hubs of wide-ranging socio-medical services. These include:

• home and adult day care
• primary care, emergency care
• nursing, social work, physical, occupational and speech therapy
• medical supplies and equipment
• transportation and in-patient services

Like its well-known West Coast cousin, San Francisco’s On Lok Program, CCM prevents hospitalizations and successfully promotes independence through its carefully integrated services. By keeping clients linked to high quality medical care through dedicated staff members who seek to maintain each client's highest level of function, Beth Abraham’s acclaimed CCM program promotes human autonomy and saves millions of health care dollars each year. For more information, visit www.ccmny.org.

Different Neighborhoods Forming a Community

Beth Abraham is charting a new direction in long-term residential care through its "Neighborhood" Initiative. These small, tailor-made living spaces organize groups of residents around lifestyle interests rather than disease groups. Neighborhood living areas are designed to help people with different kinds of needs restore their hope, health and living opportunities. Each offers a setting that corresponds as closely as possible with the various interests and needs of the people who live within them. "Because I have the same condition as someone twice or three times my age, doesn’t mean that I should share a living space with that person," explains a young resident with a degenerative neurological disorder at a weekly council meeting for younger residents aged 18 through 50. She is one of many residents at Beth Abraham’s skilled nursing facility who are gaining valuable experience though a neighborhood vocational retraining program.

Beth Abraham's neighborhood approach stems from a long tradition of forging living environments that help residents:

• discover new interests
• secure alternative paths for work and learning, and
• enjoy life-enhancing musical and other arts experiences.

Dr. Oliver Sacks and the Power to Awaken and Heal

Many Beth Abraham health care professionals have made significant contributions in their fields. Among the talented leaders who have been influential here, none is more renowned than neurologist and author Dr. Oliver Sacks, a Beth Abraham staff member since 1966. Dr. Sacks' now classic book Awakenings chronicles his efforts using the drug L-Dopa to help return function to a severely impaired Beth Abraham community of men and women with post-encephalitic Parkinson's disease. Thought to be forever lost to the world, Dr. Sacks showed that despite profound afflictions, these "frozen" people were eager to pursue their destinies as the unique individuals they were before and after they fell into "sickness and suffering". Dr. Sacks' important work with these "forgotten" residents was the subject of the Oscar-nominated motion picture in which Robin Williams portrayed Dr. Sacks as a shy yet determined physician committed to overcoming the status quo and to making life better for people. Today Dr. Sacks stands as an exemplar of someone who helps patients move past bounds set by their illness or their caretakers.

Other notable Beth Abraham innovators include Dr. Arthur Abramson, a physicisian on the faculty of the nearby Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Abramason understood disability both professionally and personally. As a wheelchair user due to injuries he sustained during the Second WorldWar, Dr. Abramson joined his talents with William Adelman (1908-1977), a progressive figure in long-term care in making Beth Abraham a leader in new rehabilitative programming and accomodating design.

Music Has Power

In 1995, the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function (IMNF) was created with Dr. Sack's help to spark greater collaborations among music therapists and neuroscientists around the world. The IMNF, the only one of its kind in the U.S., is expanding therapeutic modalities for treating patients with strokes and other neurological conditions. It is also a major training center for music therapists and a resource for new collaborations in music-brain research. For more information, please visit www.musichaspower.org.

By providing greater options, choices and creative directions for people with wide-ranging challenges, Beth Abraham Family of Health Services offers a lifeline for thousands of severely underserved New Yorkers. Its well-designed resources offer a lifeline to disabled and chronically ill men and women confronting New York's large, de-personalized health care system and a severe housing shortage for young disabled people. Beth Abraham’s unique strengths come from a talented workforce of men and women of diverse backgrounds and wide-ranging skills who enjoy making life better for people. Its quality programming for learning and enrichment is made possible by their personal, passionate and committed care.

Beth Abraham Family of Health Services 612 Allerton Avenue Bronx, New York 10467 Phone:  718-519-4000 Tollfree:  1-888-BETHABE (238-4223) email:info@bethabe.org