Gloria Altieri’s Visit
By: Angeline Deschamps

Recently, the New York Times posted an article about bad health care in the Bronx. Gloria Altieri was the main focus of the article, although that's not how she wished the piece was written.

Ms. Altieri confessed that she had an agreement as to what was going to be in the article and who it was going to be about. Apparently, David Gonzales had other views about the article. Ms. Altieri wanted the main focus to be Yvonne Pagan, the woman who got shot by a stray bullet and received poor medical assistance at Lincoln Hospital. No one cleaned her wound; the nurses told Ms. Altieri that that “was not their job.” Yvonne got shampoo and giant rolls of paper towels from a nurse and told to take a shower herself.

Another issue that bothered Ms. Altieri was that none of the positive aspects of her job or the parents and children she works with were discussed in the article. She said that every one at Easter Seals takes care of each other. What hurt Ms. Altieri was to see how races – Latinos and African Americans – treat their own with disrespect and no compassion as illustrated in the incident at Lincoln Hospital.

A few readers agree that the article was missing elements that the article promises. The article was written to talk about health care problems in the Bronx and it ended telling us about the downs of Ms. Altieri's job. There was no further analysis on the health care topic; in fact the only valuable example given was Yvonne's situation.

Personally, I think that Ms. Altieri could try harder to fight for health care in the Bronx because in the article she said that she has to take her people to hospitals in Manhattan. Why is she taking people out of the Bronx instead of helping the Bronx?

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The Truth Behind Gloria Altieri
By: Darah Phillip

Our meeting with Gloria Altieri the afternoon of the 28th showed me that journalists don’t always write to please the subject of the article, but often to achieve their own goals. Ms. Altieri revealed that when she saw the article, she was surprised and not completely pleased. She had hoped the article would be more about Yvonne Pagan, who was shot in the head, instead of being a confusing piece about her and others that she knew. Although everything in the article was true, it was presented in a way that did not justify Altieri’s desire for an article to be written.

Speaking with Ms. Altieri, we got the chance to further understand her situation. She gave more reasons for why she would stay in the Bronx, saying that it’s because of the people and “the life lessons I have learned here.” After speaking with her, it was much easier to understand her situation since the article did not make it clear. She explained how she runs a special-ed preschool in the South Bronx, and how difficult it is for many of the parents since they have to deal with rudeness when they go to doctors or social care offices. She also explained the appeal of working in the South Bronx, which is often about women helping women. The positive attitude of her workplace, Eastern Seals Child Development Center, keeps her coming back, day after day, despite the challenges.

This meeting proved that stories often get twisted, and the only way to know the complete truth is to get it from the source itself.
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Is it racism, or simple stupidity?
By Abu Ali

A bullet wound to the head would most likely kill a person. But not Yvonne Pagan, who was
shot near her house by a stray bullet. Gloria Altieri, who runs a child development center in the Bronx, tried to seek proper help for Pagan, but to no avail, and later claimed that if Pagan had been white, she would be treated humanely. Altieri loves the children in her development center. She says that they are, "the sweetest" kids she knows. Altieri said that she learned lessons from these kids that she wouldn't have learned elsewhere.

"I'm not questioning the medical care that she got, I'm questioning the care that she got," Altieri said. Altieri believes that the fact that Pagan was of Hispanic descent caused her to be treated poorly. "All the nurses and doctors were white," said Altieri, and she believes that that issue was the cause of Pagan's poor treatment. Altieri is trying to deliver fair treatments for all people in Bronx hospitals. However this will be a long process that in the end will benefit everyone in the city.

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“The Real Deal With Gloria” Altieri
By: Cris Chalmers

By no means did The New York Times article do justice to the head of Easter
Seals Child Development Center founder Gloria Altieri. In a group interview with Ms.
Altieri, we found out the real deal. Ms. Gloria Altieri, 52, is a Puerto Rican Bronx native. She is the head of the Easter Seals Child Development Center on Rev. James A. Polite avenue in the Bronx. The kids in the center are split into three groups according to age: from 18 months to three years, three to five years, and special education teenagers in the afternoons. Children
are not the only people Ms. Altieri is trying to help though. According to her, the hospitals need help too.

When an assistant to Ms. Altieri named Yvonne Pagan was shot outside her building one night, Pagan was taken to Lincoln Hospital. It was there that Ms. Pagan got some very lack-luster treatment. “They didn’t even clean the wound,” said Ms. Altieri. The hospital did not treat Ms. Pagan properly. This led Ms. Altieri to try and get hospital policies changed. Ms. Altieri soon found that her friend Yvonne was only one of her many employees to be treated in the same way at Bronx hospitals. Ms. Altieri, now on top of running the Easter Seals Child Development Center, is taking on the hospitals in hopes of getting Bronxites better treatment at the places where they need it most.

To do this Ms. Altieri sought out David Gonzales of the New York Times. She figured some exposure of the hospitals’ malpractice might lead to change and maybe it could have, had the
reporter reported the story. Instead, he talked about Ms. Altieri. Then, in the article, he touched on the hospitals for a little, then about her employees stories of nicknames and over-the-counter beatings. Had he done things how Ms. Altieri intended, maybe there would have at least been an investigation. Gloria Altieri is a woman who just wants to do right by her borough and her friends.

She is a truly kind person.

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July 28,2005-Gloria wonders anxiously why an article she wanted to be about her friend turned out to be an article about herself. The whole purpose of Gloria's interview with the New York Times was to show how her friend was shot in the back of the head and subsequently received poor medical treatment because, Altieri asserts, she was a low-income Bronx resident.
Altieri was born in the Bronx . She now runs a pre-school for kids with mental health issues. Gloria enjoys working with the children. She is very interested in making other people's lives better than her own. For example, her friend, Yvonne Pagan, who was shot in the back of the head. Gloria is now fighting to get Pagan moved out of the building in front of which she had gotten shot.

Gloria feels that if she had to start over she wouldn't change anything. There are two reasons Gloria stated that she wouldn't change. One of them was that Gloria is used to “people who don't have and are happy.” The second reason is her job at the pre-school she runs. Gloria said she totally fell in love with the kids that she works with.

She also says "how can you leave when there's still so much to do.” Gloria doesn't plan to retire from her job at the pre-school that she been running since 1992 any time soon. She still lives in the Bronx and doesn’t plan on leaving any time soon either.
-Arthur Sanders

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Gloria Altieri loves the Bronx. As a matter of fact, she wouldn't want to live anywhere else. ''I've been here for so long that it makes me want to stay here longer,'' Ms. Altieri said. She is thinking specifically of the parents and children that she comes in contact with every day at Easter Seals Child Development Center down in the South Bronx. “It's because of the people that I stay here. They're special,” she said.

However, Ms.Altieri does not have the same feelings about the healthcare provided in Bronx medical facilities.

Lack of compassion, Altieri says, is the problem plaguing Bronx medical facilities, not the actual healthcare. She feels that the attitudes that are displayed are improper and have no business being expressed in hospitals.

Ms. Altieri is particularly perplexed by the fact that it is members of her own race (she is Hispanic) that are showing this lack of care towards each other. She believes that we should all help each other out instead of thinking that we are much better than one another. ''What makes us that much different from each other? We are all just human beings and we should be treated like one,” she said.

Her response to the Bronx medical facilities health care was simple: we should all try and help each other and display positive attitudes.
-Joshua Brooks

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Ms. Gloria Altieri, Fighting for the betterment of our borough, the Bronx
By Atanu Roy

If you have ever had an awful experience in the hospitals of the Bronx, you are not the only one. The question of health and dignity in the medical system of this borough is not new for us. But how many of us are actually trying to make this situation better instead of just complaining about it? Ms. Gloria Altieri is one of the people who not only realizes the problems, but also tries her best to solve them.

On her visit to Lehman College on July 28, Altieri discussed her experiences and the difficulties of her job.

“I am used to people who don’t have, and think they are happy.” Ms. Altieri said. She runs the Easter Seals Child Development Center on the Rev. James A. Polite Avenue at the South Bronx. The recent accident of Yvonne Pagan, one of her teaching assistants, brought her face-to-face with the terrible reality of the Bronx healthcare system. Ms. Pagan was hit in the head by a stray bullet outside an apartment building last month. She went to the Lincoln Medical Center in Bronx for treatment, but eventually had to move to a Manhattan hospital. Ms. Altieri was with her throughout the ordeal, experiencing the horrifying reality of the medical system in the Bronx.

“I am not questioning the medical care she got,” she said. “I am questioning the attitude. The New York Times journalist David Gonzalez put Altieri in the limelight when his article, “In Bronx, a Fight for Health and Dignity,” was published on July 26 in the Metro section of the New York Times Altieri started her career as a teacher. She now works with Easter Seals Child Development Center, helping children to grow with all the facilities they should have. Overall, Ms. Altieri is trying to make our society a better place, not only for the present, but for the future.
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07-31-05

Gloria Altieri has been working with children who have special needs and their parents for the past 13 years. The children are autistic, or have birth defects because their mothers were alcoholics or drug abusers during pregnancy. Altieri’s main job is to help these kids relax and face their common, everyday fears. Altieri is not troubled by her job because it’s one of the enjoyable things in her life. But she is deeply disturbed by the treatment her students and their parents receive from the health profession.

On July 28th, when Altieri spoke to students in the journalism class that I am taking at Lehman College, she shared her opinions about the heath profession. She has a problem with healthcare in the Bronx, due to a personal experience. Her friend and client was treated poorly at a hospital to which she was taken after being hit by a stray bullet outside her apartment building. Her friend survived the horrible incident, but received poor treatment at the hospital. Altieri was incensed by her friend’s experience and sought to do something about it. She contacted the hospital officials and received the same treatment as her friend. She then decided to contact a reporter so that her friend’s story could be read by everyone.

In the process of recounting the events and her reaction to them, Altieri managed to offend one of the students in the class by making a biased comment. She said that if a person were white, she would receive proper treatment. The student, who is white, was offended because she too had a personal experience in which a family member received poor treatment from heath professionals, regardless of her race or color. After hearing the student’s story, Altieri defended her statement by saying that she was disappointed that people of color (the people involved in the incident were Hispanic) did not treat each other with respect.

Altieri’s meeting with the class was interesting in many ways, from the methods she used with her students, to her views of the health profession, to her opinions of who gets treated better by healthcare workers and why.

-- Samantha Seodas
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BRONX, July 28 – Education director Gloria Altieri of Easter Seas Child Development Center, a Bronx facility dedicated to helping people with disabilities, visited Lehman College to express her feelings on a recent New York Times article. The article, written by David Gonzales, was reported when Altieri felt that Yvonne Pagan, her close friend and co-worker, was neglected
during a recent emergency visit to Lincoln Medical Center. Pagan had been hit by a stray bullet near her home in the South Bronx. With her hair soaking with blood, none of the nurses helped wash Pagan. Instead, she was given shampoo and towels to wash her hair on her own.

"I'm not questioning the medical care that she got. I'm questioning
the care that she got," Altieri said.

Altieri says the negligence that exists in hospitals in New York City, primarily in the Bronx, is frustrating. However, she felt that Gonzales’ article focused more on her own job than on what happened to her friend.

Gonzales missed the mark on the article’s main point, she said. Instead of focusing on her, Gonzales should have exposed what was going on in New York City hospitals. But, even though she was disappointed by the outcome of the article, Altieri was quick to point out that nothing Gonzales wrote was a misrepresentation. “As much as I didn't like it,” Altieri said. “It didn’t misrepresent.”

Brian Choi
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Come to think of it
by Ana Figuereo

I felt my heart beat slowly and heavily as I opened my eyes from the slumber I was in. I was met with people scurrying about me, pumping my chest and counting to five. I felt fear creep up from the tips of my toes to my brain. Something was wrong. Soon the doctors stopped pumping and I was fully awake. I went into cardiac arrest after receiving the wrong dosage of Morphine, a drug used to dull pain. My mother was hysterical and I at the time didn’t understand, since I couldn’t remember what had just happened.

People say that they change after having a near death experience. I have not changed my outlook on life, but I have changed my view on Bronx Hospitals. Now I am always on alert and it’s scary to think that a person can’t truly rely on their hospital when they are in need.

I and my fellow classmates were lucky to engage in a discussion with Gloria Altieri who was mentioned in the New York Times article “In Bronx, a fight for health and dignity” by David Gonzalez.

Gloria works at Easter Seals Child Development Center in the Bronx. Her oldest child, now a successful producer in Hollywood, suffered from developmental problems growing up, and that is why Altieri chose to work with special education children. She loves working with the children and has also taught high school and college.

Altieri admits that it’s not the quality of Bronx hospitals that she questions; it’s the attitude the staff dishes out to patients. And I agree. Unfortunately, most of the staff of these hospitals are black and Hispanic. “It breaks my heart,” Gloria, who is Hispanic, said when she referred to the way visitors were treated by healthcare workers and attendants of their same race or ethnicity. The staff seems to put their own people down. I think this is the true definition of betrayal. There are immigrants in the Bronx who need help in adjusting to their surroundings and these hospitals should be the first place where they can find some solace.

I may not have experienced any attitude, but I have seen it happen. Most of the time, hospital staff seem impatient and irritated. They sometimes roll their eyes and suck their teeth when someone asks a simple question. It’s like they don’t want to help at all. It’s a shame that the hospital hires these.

“But what about her dignity?” Gloria asked when she talked about the time she tried to get help from hospital staff to clean her friend’s head wound. She talked about how her friend was given large paper towels to dry herself after her shower in the hospital bathroom. Gloria knew that “services are not up to par,” but a clean towel would have been preferred. A person’s dignity can be easily diminished in situations like these.

Dignity is what every person has and no one should feel like it’s being walked all over just because they asked a simple question or because they don’t know any English. Gloria wants everyone, especially those who think that whoever is in charge knows best, to stand up for themselves. She said that Bronxites needed to ask questions and be more aware.

Now that I think about what happened to me three years ago, I can’t help but think if I indeed needed to wake up. Would my mother have spoken against the hospital if I had died? Or would they just mark me as another notch on their bloopers belt?
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Human Rights and Medical Negligence
By Pratik Shah

There are numerous accounts of people being mistreated at hospitals in the Bronx. Personally, I think it is a crime to ignore a patient or to refuse a patient his or her rights.

Yvonne Pagan, a teaching assistant in the Bronx, was hit in the head by a stray bullet outside an apartment building on 163rd Street and Prospect Avenue on the night of June 8th while she was relaxing with her friends. She was taken to Lincoln Medical Center for treatment. Her hair was unwashed, matted, and bloody. The doctors didn’t even bother to clean her wound. When the nurse was asked to wash her hair she said that it “wasn’t her job” to do so.

The next day was hardly better for Ms. Pagan. The doctors said they didn’t want to operate on her head because they thought that the bullet fragment was difficult to reach. Doctors said it would be better to leave the bullet lodged in Pagan’s head.
Pagan was released. But her suffering had just begun.

Yvette Martinez, Pagan’s sister, is still worried about how Pagan is dealing with the emotional effects of the shooting. Martinez had to help her sister on July 4th, when fireworks led Ms. Pagan to hit the floor in panic.

And then there was the shoddy treatment Pagan received from Lincoln Medical Center. Martinez claims that she had asked the hospital to refer her sister for trauma counseling, but said that the hospital made no attempts to follow through. "It's almost like she should have been used to being shot," Ms. Martinez told David Gonzales of The New York Times. "Their attitude was so cavalier. Not the main doctor, because she was good and explained stuff. But her staff was lacking."

The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation said in a statement that Ms. Pagan received referrals and information regarding social services that she requested. Ms. Pagan is just one case of patient dissatisfaction with hospital care in the Bronx. Here in our borough, there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of cases similar to hers. Instead of prioritizing patient care, hospitals are more concerned with their profit margins. Compounding the problem is the fact that those responsible for informing citizens of their rights – the mass media – have also made profits their primary goal, above civic duty. I hope that one day both of these industries will come back to their primary objectives of helping people.