CRAINSNEWYORK.COM I FEBRUARY 12, 2024
Providers get creative with care to reach diverse patients The city’s health institutions say they are trying to relate better to clients from underserved communities by training staff in culturally competent concepts By Jacqueline Neber Criss Smith met a nurse who was also a Black queer man during his experience transitioning. Talking to him felt like talking to an older brother, Smith said. “I could speak freely. There is a certain freedom there that you don’t get every day,” he said. “I cannot imagine even starting that conversation with someone BY THE outside of that shared experience.” NUMBERS Smith’s experience at Callen-Lorde, a community health organization for New Yorkers who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or nonbinary based in Chelsea, is an inNYC Health stance of culturally competent health care, a con+ Hospitals’ cept that centers on the idea that providers who budget for look like patients, hail from their communities, fiscal 2025 speak their language, or even are aware of their specific cultural values, beliefs and behaviors, can facilitate better health outcomes. It can be as simple as a doctor speaking the same Spanish dialect as their patient, or a community member who has a chronic health condition teaching their neighbor how to manage their own condition. Such care creates a more inviting and safer environment for vulnerable communities who have historically felt ostracized from the medical community, sometimes leading patients to avoid
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Criss Smith at Callen-Lorde speaking with Kate Bautista, a doctor | BUCK ENNIS
Port Authority is ‘hopeful’ office demand will rise to fund $10B bus terminal revamp By Caroline Spivack and C. J. Hughes
A pair of proposed office towers are critical to funding the sorely-needed overhaul of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, but relying on an office market recovery seems a risky bet. Key to the $10 billion redevelopment of the 41st Street bus terminal, which sits between Eighth and Ninth avenues, is $2.5
billion in tax-increment financing from two new office towers over the project along Eighth Avenue. The pandemic, however, has caused a major shift in work patterns and the commercial real estate market, and made the project’s calculus more of a gamble, but not according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. When asked why the authority is putting its proverbial eggs in one office-market
basket, Hersh Parekh, the authority’s director of government and community relations, pointed to the recent $963 million purchase of a Midtown building on Fifth Avenue by Kering, the fashion firm that owns Gucci and Balenciaga. “I think the short answer to that question is anyone that has bet against New York City has always been on the wrong side,” said Parekh, during a Feb. 1 commu-
The clogged ramps at the Port Authority’s Midtown bus terminal | BLOOMBERG
nity meeting on the plan. “But there’s also data that is showing that the commercial market is on the rebound … there was See TERMINAL on Page 22
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