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Weill Cornell Medicine’s tripartite mission is to provide exceptional care, drive groundbreaking discoveries and teach the health-care leaders of tomorrow. Woven into the fabric of our mission lies a vital fourth pillar: community.

Here, we believe in community’s transformative power: It is foundational to who we are as an institution. Every patient we treat, student we teach, health-care professional on our team and individual who benefits from our research is a member of our wide-reaching and vibrant community.

Yet when we look at the diverse communities we serve locally and globally, we know that factors like structural racism and access to care inform and influence health outcomes. So to address these disparities, we continue to evolve and deepen how we understand the role of community in everything we do.  

Weill Cornell Medicine investigators are leaders in scrutinizing the very practices and models that medicine has traditionally used to understand health disparities — and to improve them. We are creating comprehensive, strategic programs to enact change, such as initiatives to diminish cancer-related health inequities in impoverished neighborhoods, including by expanding the pipeline of future STEM experts to ensure that diverse communities are represented in scientific discovery and health care.

We are also proud of our role in the global community and deeply aware of our social responsibility to it. Our international research programs, such as in Haiti, have impact far and wide, and our clinical efforts — like our work to build a thriving academic medical center in Tanzania — are prime examples of how we can grow and strengthen academic medicine in communities that need it most.

To best serve the communities around us, we must also look within. We must overcome our unconscious biases because our dedication to diversity, equity, inclusion, justice and belonging is fundamental to our identity. By embracing and celebrating our differences, we ensure that every member of our community not only feels valued, but empowered to help those we serve. As we join forces, I am optimistic that we will grow stronger and change medicine so that it serves all who need it.

Robert A. Harrington, M.D.
Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean, Weill Cornell Medicine 
Provost for Medical Affairs, Cornell University

Portrait: Sam Kerr