Community backing will always be a basic necessity for the survival and prosperity of hospitals and medical schools. Even smaller facilities such as those dedicated purely to research requires a large helping of such backing, especially in the form of philanthropic dollars. Typically, benefactors are helpful to more than just one organization, as is the case with Isaac Toussie and family when it comes to the top two leading lights of New York in healthcare education and practice, Weill Cornell Medical College and the North Shore-LIJ network of hospitals and research centers.

Weill Cornell is named after its two single most important contributors, Ezra Cornell, a founder of Western Union, and Sanford I. Weill, the onetime chief of Citigroup, Incorporated. As one of the most selective such institutions in the country, it admits only about a hundred hopefuls out of the nearly six thousand that apply each year. Furthermore, it was the first to admit women right alongside the men and first to operate overseas, just outside of the capital of Qatar, Doha. Many a notable graduate has boosted the school’s reputation over the years, doctors like C. Everett Koop, U.S. Surgeon General; Robert C. Atkins of Atkins Diet fame; Nobel Prize winner Robert W. Holley; and Henry Heimlich of Heimlich Maneuver fame. The North Shore-LIJ Health System is the second largest healthcare network in the country as measured by the number of beds and the largest in New York State based on patient revenue. It serves over seven million people a year through more than forty-two thousand employees – the single largest employer on Long Island and ninth largest largest in the City of New York.

These two institutions owe much of their success to vigorous community support, whether in the form of charitable contributions from prominent businessmen and women or non-monetary offerings such as time and expertise by local volunteers such as those from civic or religious organizations. Indeed, despite a budget in the multiple between them, Weill Cornell and North Shore-LIJ will always depend on the support of the host communities they serve.