Thirty-eight additional individuals from 18 area public hospitals, federally qualified health centers, long-term care institutions, and nursing schools in the Essex/Union/Morris region received certificates and awards of $500 each from the HFNJ. They were recognized for  extraordinary demonstration of caring and compassion in their work.

Newark’s mayor, the Hon. Cory A. Booker, served as the event’s special keynote speaker, and John A. Brennan, M.D., executive director of Newark Beth Israel Medical Center , delivered the keynote address. 

The Mobile Healthcare Program, now called the NJ Children’s Health Project, provides comprehensive preventive care and follow-up to children and adults throughout Newark, Irvington and Elizabeth. Dr. McNeal’s vision in establishing the program was to provide a mobile medical home for people who would otherwise likely go without healthcare, such as the uninsured, the poor, and the disenfranchised.

McNeal was van’s first staffer

Dr. McNeal devoted endless hours to the realization of her dream to build a mobile program and obtain and outfit a full-service van. She staffed that van herself until there was sufficient funding to hire full-time nurse practitioners. Today she is the director of the program.

McNeal said, “The UMDNJ School of Nursing’s Mobile Healthcare Project was predicated upon the University’s community service mission and conceptualized in recognition of the need for the delivery of compassionate and humanistic care that respects the dignity, beliefs and personal values of the patients it serves.

“Now in its third year of operation and having completed over 2600 scheduled patient visits, this initiative was made possible by the generous grant support of the Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey, awarded early on when the project was merely a concept on paper.”

McNeal, PhD, ACNS-BC, APN, FAAN, is also the editor of The ABNF Journal; and Fellow, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Program.

The HFJN awards program was instituted by its board chairman, Lester Z. Lieberman, and other founding trustees, to recognize the principles and vital importance of compassion, empathy, respect and cultural sensitivity in the delivery of healthcare.

Local public hospitals, nursing homes, and nursing schools are engaged in the awards program nominating process. That process results in the recommendation of dozens of remarkable individuals who make a difference in the trenches of patient care, people whose jobs range from orderly, HIV nurse, receiving clerk to pediatric oncologist. The Leadership winner is selected by the Foundation Staff and Board of Trustees.

Lieberman said, “Healthcare goes much beyond fighting disease and infirmity. It is first and foremost about people. And so we honor the true heart and soul of healthcare, our special honoree, Dr. Gloria McNeal, and dozens of others who help patients and their families maintain their hopes, their dreams and their dignity.”