Students at Truman High School in Co-op City competed to design greeting cards for Morris Heights Health Center patients. The cards thank patients for choosing MHHC.
Nearly 20 Truman students submitted designs. MHHC uses the cards to retain patients. The competition’s winner and two runners-up were honored in Truman’s Culinary Café on Thursday, December 3. The other students earned MHHC certificates.
MHHC asked the students to expand on a theme: “A Healthy Bronx.” The cards featured images from the healthcare world and Bronx neighborhoods.
“We solicited the partnership of Truman High School’s principal and art teacher, who encouraged the students to get involved,” MHHC president Verona Greenland said.
MHHC credited the winner, 17-year old Ruth Andrade, on cards sent out to patients, Greenland said.
“The essence of the card design was on welcoming individuals into the family of health and to emphasize that when people are well, that means our communities are well and as a result happier,” Greenland added.
Andrade’s design featured people of different nationalities holding hands around the MHHC logo, standing on an image of the earth.
“I put the earth as the background and [drew] people of different nationalities standing together united,” Andrade said.
She also included images of Bronx neighborhoods, of a nurse helping a young girl and of an ambulance with a halo above it.
“I’ve always loved the arts,” Andrade explained. “I want to go to college for art. I’ve never won anything before.”
Andrade won the laptop and an iPod Shuffle. The two runners-up, Jamie Rentas and Claudia Badillo, both accepted iPod shuffles.
Rentas, a 17-year-old junior, designed a card with images of Yankee Stadium, the New York Botanical Garden and the Bronx Zoo.
“The theme was ‘A Healthy Bronx,’ so the first things I thought of were Yankee Stadium, the Bronx Zoo, Botanical Garden and of course the Morris Heights Health Center,” Rentas said. “[My card] is very colorful. [I wanted] to brighten up a [patient’s] day.”
Reach reporter Patrick Rocchio at 718 742-3393 or procchio@cnglocal.com
