Since 2005, the Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA) has aggressively recruited and placed minorities on health care boards throughout the New York metropolitan area.

GNYHA’s Center for Trustee Initiatives seeks to increase participation of minorities in health care governance to improve the services that its member hospitals and other health care organizations deliver to their increasingly diverse populations, and to better reflect the racial, ethnic and religious diversity in their communities.

The core of the Center’s mission is trustee recruitment. Once a member makes a request, GNYHA works with a broad array of professional associations, businesses and community organizations to identify at least three potential candidates that match the member’s needs. Candidates must be seasoned executives to ensure that they understand trustees’ legal and fiduciary responsibilities and that their experience is commensurate with that of their potential peers on the board.

The Center also facilitates ongoing education for new and veteran trustees to provide a core understanding of health care governance, as well as information on the latest challenges affecting hospitals. 

As of June 2008, more than two dozen trustee candidates had been successfully placed.

The Center is just one of a host of leadership development programs aimed at minorities GNYHA offers. For more than a decade, GNYHA has been a leading partner in the Institute for Diversity in Health Management’s Summer Enrichment Program. Along with New York’s Baruch College of Public Affairs, the association created and administers the Health Care Leadership Institute to provide leadership development opportunities for middle-level managers from diverse backgrounds. 

“I would like to see what we’ve done be more than just a prototype for the rest of the country; I would like to see it be a lightening rod,” said Lee Perlman, GNYHA’s executive vice president for administration and chief financial officer. Association executives “need to make this a core priority,” he added. “They need to be champions. “There’s a lot more that we all can do.”

For more information about GNYHA’s initiatives, contact the association’s Mary Medina at (212) 258-5350 or medina@gnyha.org.