The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS or Mount Sinai), formerly the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, is a private medical school in New York City, New York, United States. The school is the academic teaching arm of the Mount Sinai Health System, which manages eight hospital campuses in the New York metropolitan area, including Mount Sinai Hospital and the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary.

Quick Facts Former names, Type ...
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
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Former names
Mount Sinai School of Medicine
TypePrivate medical school
Established1963; 61 years ago (1963)
Parent institution
Mount Sinai Health System
Endowment$1.7 billion (2017)[1]
DeanDennis S. Charney
President & CEOKenneth L. Davis
Academic staff
1,650+ full-time[2]
6,000+ total[3]
Students560+ MD students
90+ MD/PhD students
270+ PhD students[3]
Location, ,
United States
CampusUrban
Websiteicahn.mssm.edu
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The school is a teaching hospital first conceived in 1958. Due to simultaneous expansion initiatives at the hospital, classes did not begin until 1968. Its name was changed to The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in 2012, after a $200 million grant from businessman Carl Icahn.

Post-graduate academics are focused on biomedical sciences and public health. Its campus is located on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, between Fifth and Madison Avenues, stretching from East 98th Street to East 102nd Street.

As of 2024, school is ranked #40 in Best Global Hospitals.[4]

History

As Mount Sinai School of Medicine

The first official proposal to establish a medical school at Mount Sinai was made to the hospital's trustees in January 1958. The school contemplated a new kind of medical institution encompassing a medical school supported by a teaching hospital. It would include an undergraduate school representing allied health fields, a graduate school of biological sciences, and a graduate school of physical sciences.[5]

This philosophy was defined by Hans Popper, Horace Hodes, Alexander Gutman, Paul Klemperer, George Baehr, Gustave L. Levy, and Alfred Stern, among others.[6] Milton Steinbach was the school's first president.[7]

Classes at Mount Sinai School of Medicine began in 1968, and the school soon became known as one of the leading medical schools in the U.S., as the hospital gained recognition for its laboratories, advances in patient care and the discovery of diseases.[8] The City University of New York granted Mount Sinai's degrees.[6]

The school expanded programs and added a range of dedicated departments in the subsequent decades. The Edith J. Baerwald Professor of Community Medicine and Social Work (1969); [9] the first Department of Neoplastic Diseases in an American medical school (1973);[10] and the first Department of Geriatrics and Adult Development (1982).[11]

In the 1990s, it created the Cultural Diversity in Medicine Program focused on healthcare availability to diverse patient populations.[12] It was the second institution in the New York Metropolitan area to create an Academic Department of Emergency Medicine (1994),[13] it started the Institute for Gene Therapy and Molecular Medicine (1996),[14] and an Office of Multi-cultural and Community Affairs to add diversity to the demographic composition of the school (1998).[15] In collaboration with the Pew Charitable Trust, the Center for Children's Health and the Environment was formed to examine links between childhood illnesses and toxic pollutants (1999).[16][17]

Mount Sinai's degrees were granted by City University of New York. before 1999, when Mount Sinai changed university affiliations from City University to New York University but without merging its operations with the New York University School of Medicine. This affiliation change took place as part of the merger in 1998 of Mount Sinai and NYU medical centers to create the Mount Sinai–NYU Medical Center and Health System.[18] In 2003, the partnership between the two dissolved.[19][20]

In 2007, Mount Sinai Medical Center's boards of trustees approved the termination of the academic affiliation between Mount Sinai and NYU and it was officially terminated in 2008.[21] In 2010, Mount Sinai was accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and became an independent degree-granting institution.

As Icahn School of Medicine

On November 14, 2012, it was announced that Mount Sinai School of Medicine would be renamed Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, following a US$200 million gift from New York businessman and philanthropist Carl Icahn.[22][23]

Campus

The 18-story Icahn Institute provides 350,000 sf of laboratory, treatment, and education space for the School of Medicine.[24] The campus is located on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, between Fifth and Madison Avenues, stretching from East 98th Street to East 102nd Street.

Partnerships and affiliations

In 2015, Mount Sinai announced partnerships with The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia as well as National Jewish Health, the nation's leading institutes for pediatric and pulmonary care respectively, leading to the creation of the Mount Sinai Children’s Heart Center[25] and the Mount Sinai – National Jewish Health Respiratory Institute.[26]

COVID response

The first diagnosed COVID-19 case in New York City was by Mount Sinai emergency department's Dr. Angela Chen.[27]

In March 2020, Elmhurst Hospital Center, the public hospital that serves as a major training site for Mount Sinai students and residents, was the epicenter of New York City's initial COVID-19 surge, with Mount Sinai house staff and faculty serving as the city's first front-line workers treating patients infected with coronavirus.[28] Mount Sinai has since established itself at the forefront of research to understand and treat COVID-19, being named a lead site in a $470 million study to examine the long-term effects of COVID-19.[29]

Controversy

In April 2019, the Icahn School was named in a lawsuit filed against Mount Sinai Health System and several employees of the Icahn School's Arnhold Institute for Global Health.[30] The suit was filed by eight current and former employees for "age and sex discrimination as well as improper reporting to funding agencies, misallocation of funds, failing to obtain Institutional Review Board approval prior to conducting research in violation of Mount Sinai and federal guidelines, and failing properly to adhere to the guidelines of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA."[31] The school denies the claims. More than 150 students at the Icahn School and more than 400 Icahn and Mount Sinai Health System faculty have signed letters, addressed to the Board of Trustees, calling on the system to investigate these allegations.[32][33]

Academics

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Icahn Medical Institute at ISMMS, built in 1997 and designed by Davis Brody Bond.

Mount Sinai's medical curriculum is based on the standard program of medical education in the United States: the first two years of study are confined to the medical sciences, the latter to the study of clinical sciences. The first and second years are strictly pass/fail; the third and fourth years feature clinical rotations at Mount Sinai Hospital (Manhattan) and Elmhurst Hospital Center,[34] a major level 1 trauma center and safety-net hospital known for being situated in the "most ethnically diverse community in the world," serving an area of one million people with recent immigrants encompassing 112 different countries.[35] Other clerkship and residency training sites include the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, Mount Sinai Hospital of Queens, James J. Peters VA Medical Center in the Bronx, Mount Sinai West, Mount Sinai Morningside, and Mount Sinai Kravis Children's Hospital. [36]

Mount Sinai's faculty as of 2022 includes 23 elected members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine[37] and 40 members of the American Society for Clinical Investigation.[38]

In the 2023-2024 term, the MD program matriculated 120 students from 8,514 applicants.[39] The median undergraduate GPA of matriculants was reportedly 3.84, and the median Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) score at that time was in 95th percentile, but those admitted through the early-admissions program do not take the MCAT.[citation needed]

The Medical Scientist Training Program is currently[when?] training over 90 MD/PhD students. As one of the most selective medical schools in the U.S., Mount Sinai received 8,276 applications for approximately 140 MD and MD/PhD positions for the 2021–2022 academic year.

Admissions

Applicants are required to have a bachelor's degree, a competitive MCAT score, and coursework including biology, physics, English and chemistry. A cumulative GPA above is 3.5 is reportedly required.[40] Individual educational programs are accredited through the appropriate bodies, including but not limited to LCME, CEPH, ACCME and ACGME.

College freshmen or sophomores can approach admissions through the FlexMed Program allowing them to apply for early acceptance regardless of prior majors.[41][42]

Programs

The school only offers graduate degrees:[43]

  • Doctor of Medicine (MD): A four-year program comprising two years of classroom and laboratory instruction and two years of clinical rotations.
  • PhD Programs in Biomedical Sciences: The subjects include genetics and genomic sciences, neuroscience, microbiology, immunology, pharmacology, and physiology.
  • Master of Public Health (MPH) Program: A two-year program focused on preventing and managing diseases at the population level.
  • Combined degree programs: Students can earn their MD and another degree through programs such as MD/PhD, MD/MPH, and MD/Master of Science in Clinical Research.

Community service

Mount Sinai's four-pronged missions (quality education, patient care, research, and community service) follow the "commitment of serving science," and the majority of students actively participate in some aspect of community service. This participation includes The East Harlem Health Outreach Partnership, which the students of Mount Sinai developed to create a health partnership with the East Harlem community, providing quality health care, regardless of ability to pay, to uninsured residents of East Harlem.[44][45][46][47]

Rankings

ISMMS was named #46 in global university rankings as determined by U.S. News & World Report for 2022-2023. Rankings by subject for the same period include:[48]

More information Ranking, Subject ...
Ranking Subject
59 Biology and Biochemistry
7 Cardiac and Cardiovascular Systems
8 Cell Biology
24 Clinical Medicine
59 Endocrinology and Metabolism
6 Gastroenterology and Hepatology
17 Immunology
147 Infectious Diseases
29 Microbiology
11 Molecular Biology and Genetics
25 Neuroscience and Behavior
53 Oncology
103 Pharmacology and Toxicology
41 Psychiatry/Psychology
36 Public, Environmental and Occupational Health
18 Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Medical Imaging
190 Social Sciences and Public Health
46 Surgery
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  • Mount Sinai was ranked 11th overall among research-based medical schools in the 2023 edition of U.S. News & World Report.[49]
  • The Mount Sinai Hospital, the teaching hospital of ISMMS, was listed in the 2022 edition of U.S. News & World Report Honor Roll, with multiple specialties ranked in the top 20 nationwide (geriatrics #1, cardiology #6, endocrinology #10, neurology & neurosurgery #10, orthopedics #14, rehabilitation #14, gastroenterology #15, urology #16, pulmonology #20).[50] The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked #14 in ophthalmology.[51]
  • Mount Sinai was ranked 8th among medical schools in the U.S. receiving NIH grants in 2022,[52] and 2nd in research dollars per principal investigator among U.S. medical schools by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).[53]

Publications

The Annals of Global Health [54] was founded at Mount Sinai in 1934, then known as the Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine. Levy Library Press publishes The Journal of Scientific Innovation in Medicine.[55]

Notable people

Alumni

Faculty

References

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