The rockefeller university

Iris Taylor has been office administrator of University Health and Wellness for over a decade.

Like any university campus, Rockefeller has a library for quiet research and a convenient café for a quick pick-me-up. There’s an IT department to help with glitchy laptops and a faculty and student club for hosting casual meetups. But what if you need help with immunizations, cancer screenings, or other routine medical services? Well, Rockefeller has you covered there too.

Janica Barnett

“We write prescriptions, we do travel medicine, and we make sure your ears and eyes don’t suffer damage from loud noises or lasers that may be in your workplace,” says Janica Barnett, the director of University Health and Wellness (UHW), an occupational clinic tucked into the ground floor of the Hospital Building. “And if you need blood pressure checks, chronic disease management, or a referral to a specialist, we can help with that too.”

For more than 30 years, UHW has been a hidden gem of the Rockefeller community, managing a range of health care services and providing primary care and wellness services to university employees, offering everything from biosafety level 3 testing to back massages.

“I want to make sure that all our employees have equal access to health care, whether that means having a healthcare plan or helping employees get primary care or manage their chronic illnesses,” says Virginia Huffman, Vice President of Human Resources, who established the office.

A small team

Founded as the Employee Health Office, UHW began as a first aid station where two nurses tended to occupational injuries such as cuts, scrapes, and wounds. That changed in the early 1990s, when Huffman re-envisioned it as a resource where staff, faculty, and students could also access routine screenings for chronic health conditions such as high cholesterol and diabetes, get checked for skin cancer, and get referrals. Over the years, she’s added wellness initiatives such as yoga and meditation, and in partnership with Human Resources, added a monthly Wellness Works program. Separate from UHW, Huffman also hired fitness manager Tim Blanchfield to oversee the fitness center, multi-sports court, and fitness classes.

“I’m really proud of our wellness programs, because we began them long before other institutions like ours did,” says Huffman. “And they’re very popular.”

Today the UHW office is composed of four members: Janica Barnett, director and nurse practitioner; Lisa Tsatsas and John Barazzuol, registered nurses; and Iris Taylor, office administrator.

Taylor is the most tenured staff member, arriving more than 12 years ago after a quarter-century on the West Coast working first as a financial advisor and then as a compliance officer for major investment firms such as Charles Schwab and Smith Barney. After being laid off in 2011, she moved back to her native NYC to be closer to her elderly father. A change of heart about her career path brought her to Rockefeller in 2012.

“It gave me an opportunity to get to know the campus community really well,” she says. “I get to talk to a lot of people about their lives outside of work, such as family or travel.”

Through the pandemic

The clinical staff all came to UHW around the same time—during the height of the Covid pandemic.

Lisa Tsatsas

None came from far. Tsatsas has been at Rockefeller since early 2012, when she joined the Outpatient Research Center at Rockefeller University Hospital as an RN. Prior to that, she was at Weill Cornell Medical College and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, where she worked in neurology and obstetrics/gynecology. In early 2020, she took up her current role.

“It was a month before the pandemic hit,” she says. “I got a crash course in Covid, and we began seeing people right away. Though it was a hectic time, I felt like Rockefeller was going above and beyond to keep their employees safe.”

Barazzuol arrived in August 2020. He too was a local: “Except for a short stint in Harlem, all of my professional life has been within the few blocks around Rockefeller,” he says. As far back as the ’90s, first as a research assistant at Memorial Sloan Kettering and then as an RN at Cornell’s Center for Special Studies, he’d often come to Rockefeller’s dining hall and eat lunch with friends on the campus’s lush green grounds.

Finally, Barnett joined as director in January 2021. She’d begun her career as an attorney, “but I always knew I wanted something else,” she recalls. She soon followed in the footsteps of her mother, a longtime nurse in Manhattan and Brooklyn, by becoming a nurse practitioner for NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center in liver transplant and then for Mount Sinai, where she managed a team of 40 nurse practitioners. Through it all, she fiercely advocated for those around her, from securing insurance coverage for patients on the transplant waitlist to making sure nurses had fair working conditions and schedules.

“My law degree has helped me tenfold in nursing,” she says.

When she took the helm at UHW, the office was a hub for Rockefeller’s pandemic protection efforts, which had previously been led by former UHW director Ashley Foo and Covid program director Ann Campbell. Robert Darnell’s lab had created a rapid saliva test for Covid, and Tsatsas and Barazzuol tested campus community members first in an emergency tent erected on the tennis court and then in the Great Hall. They also tracked cases and provided medical guidance for those who tested positive.

Though rapid Covid tests are still available at the office, in the past couple of years, the team has been able to ramp up more typical operations—and add a plethora of others.

From injury triage to annual screenings

On a day-to-day basis, UHW handles a mix of workplace injuries, short-term disability cases, medical accommodation requests, illnesses, and walk-in routine procedures such as blood pressure checks and glucose monitoring. The wide variety of free vaccinations on offer—including influenza, Tdap, Hep A & B, meningococcal, MMR, varicellazoster, and pneumonia—draw many people as well. Protective work-related travel vaccinations are available for diseases such as typhoid and yellow fever.

They handle personal lab work, can write emergency prescriptions, and, because all have been so deeply connected to many of New York City’s medical institutions for decades, have insightful ideas about where to send Rockefeller community members for referrals, especially for specialist care.

Annual screenings for cholesterol, diabetes, and breast and skin cancer dot the calendar, as do routine occupational tests for hearing and vision, exposure to radiation, blood borne pathogens, and TB. The latter is required for people who have contact with lab animals or hospital patients, or work in the Child and Family Center. The office collaborates closely with Laboratory Safety and Environmental Health on OSHA-mandated programs.

Barnett plans and manages all of these programs, including the screening programs and semi-annual blood drives, with the help of her team.

Tending to both mind and body

Huffman has made mental health services a priority for more than a decade. As part of that effort, her office contracted with Weill-Cornell for a psychiatrist and two social workers, who work directly—and confidentially—with Rockefeller community members or refer them to other mental health specialists.

“The fact that people can get access to Weill-Cornell psychiatry for just a co-pay is a big deal,” Huffman says. Also among the wellness programs are smoking cessation counseling, a series of community events through Wellness Works, body massages, and guided meditation. Barazzuol is a licensed massage therapist who offers back massages, while Tsatsas is a certified Reiki Master and mindfulness meditation facilitator. Both conduct their sessions twice a week in the UHW Wellness Suite, a tranquil, wood-paneled, carpeted room down the hall from the main office. Barazzuol offers individual 15-minute massages on Tuesdays and Thursdays, while Tsatsas leads 20-minute group sessions on Mondays and Wednesdays. The sessions are in high demand: Open appointments, accessed through Calendly, fill up almost immediately.

“It’s been my lifelong dream to lead guided meditations in the workplace, and I’m grateful that I have this opportunity to offer this service,” says Tsatsas. “It’s 20 minutes of no phone calls, emails, or text messages. I’m very firm about everyone leaving their devices in the waiting area so they can fully de-stress, even for a brief period of time. I specifically chose 20 minutes because many people come on their lunch break, and this gives them time to eat as well.”

John Barazzuol

Barazzuol aims to provide a bit of de-stress from the work day. “Most of us have tension in our necks and shoulders from hunching at our desks or bending over our phones, and for some people, their whole job is sitting at a lab bench bent over pipettes or microscopes all day, every day. I enjoy providing at least a little bit of relief from that,” he says.

He adds, “It also gives me a chance to have a chat with people afterwards about more regular or intensive things they can do to ease the muscular tension, such as specific stretches. While I enjoy the nursing tasks of drawing blood and starting an IV and giving shots, I really like talking with patients and getting to know them. It’s a continuation of the relationship building I’ve been able to do in the past.”

Such offerings fit into UHW’s larger vision for mental health to be considered as much of a priority as physical health is.

“It’s wonderful that our wellness programs have really taken off, and we can connect people to the resources they need,” Barnett notes. “I think the Rockefeller community is a supportive one, but there can be a stigma surrounding mental health issues, and it can feel scary to think that your career could be jeopardized because you’re depressed or anxious. It’s a real concern for many. Of course, all our individual services are strictly confidential.”

International tips—and tips for internationals

Because the Rockefeller community hails from all over the world, Barnett gives destination-specific counseling for international travel, covering everything from precautions on food, water, insects, local disease outbreaks and political unrest to advice on travel health insurance and where to find the local embassy or consulate. And wherever people travel, Taylor adds another pin to the world map that hangs in UHW’s waiting room.

They also help new students, faculty and staff from abroad navigate the intricacies of the U.S. healthcare system—as well as New York City itself. Barazzuol especially likes to give first-timers insider tips for destinations and activities all over the five boroughs, and Tsatas, a parent of two high schoolers, is happy to help families navigate the NYC public school system.

“One of the things I love about our office is that we see people from all walks of life,” Taylor says. “Not only are people from all different backgrounds, they’re also from all different age groups, from students who are 25 to senior faculty who are in their ’80s—and we have services for all of them.”

“We have become a well-oiled machine that’s able to balance the daily traffic with our ongoing programs,” Barnett says. “We’re constantly busy, and we want to stay that way. We like knowing that people feel comfortable coming to us.”