Two Bronx workers were recently honored with city government’s highest public service award.
Janice A. Halloran, the Network Senior Associate Director of the Department of Emergency Medicine at North Bronx Healthcare Network and Arnaldo Bernabe, Director of Public Safety at Hostos Community College were two of six winners of the Sloan Public Service Award, presented on June 4.
Award
The 41-year-old award, which comes with a $10,000 prize, is given each year by the Fund of the City of New York to civil servants at all levels of city government.
“Our civil servants not only make New York City function efficiently day to day, they spark the innovations and drive the achievements that make our city a global leader,” said Dr. Paul L. Joskow, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “This year’s Sloan Award winners have embodied this excellence throughout their careers with their unparalleled commitment to the public good.”
The six award recipients were nominated by their colleagues, peers and friends and selected from more than 250,000 eligible city workers.
Janice Halloran
Janice Halloran has 24-hour operational responsibility for the emergency rooms at both Jacobi Medical Center and North Central Bronx hospitals. These emergency rooms, including Jacobi’s Level I Trauma Center, receive 175,000 visits annually.
She has helped to manage numerous Bronx emergencies included the 2011 bus accident on I-95, the Metro-North crash in Spuyten Duyvil last year, and Hurricane Sandy. During the hurricane, she spent 96 hours at Jacobi Hospital. She is the chairperson for Network Emergency Preparedness and the Bronx Emergency Preparedness Coalition.
“She is completely devoted to delivering better health care, her colleagues respect and admire her, and she thrives under pressure,” said Health and Hospitals Corporation President Dr. Ram Raju. “She is also an extraordinary emergency planner and manager, and constantly seeks ways to improve the hospitals where she works.”
“I didn’t know anything when I first started in 1991, but when I landed here I immediately found my niche,” said Halloran about her 23-year career with NYC HHC.
Arnaldo Bernabe
Bernabe leads the Hostos Community College campus security force, which serves nearly 7,000 students who attend classes at the Mott Haven Campus.
He is credited with carefully developing his staff and creating a positive environment for the student body, many of whom speak English as a second language. He has also gone above and beyond the duties of a security officer by finding help for students who face homelessness.
“Chief Bernabe is not only a safety officer at Hostos; he is an educator, a role model, a person of true wisdom, and the one person absolutely everyone calls upon,” said one Hostos faculty member.
“We need to be more than security officers,” said Bernabe. “We have to understand the difficulties students face on a daily basis and act as colleagues working together to create a safe and rewarding educational community,”
