START Treatment & Recovery Centers has named four new members to its board of trustees: Evelyn Harrington, LCSW–R; Yuridia Peña; Dorothy Dawn (Dee Dee) Ricks; and Ashanda Myrna Saint Jean MD, FACOG. START, a non-profit, is New York’s largest independent drug treatment agency, and has treated more than 50,000 New Yorkers since it was founded 51-years ago.
“We are delighted to have these four outstanding women serving on START’s Board of Trustees,” said START’s CEO Lawrence S. Brown, Jr., MD, MPH, FACP, DFASAM. “They bring decades of experience working with underserved populations and will help START meet its goal of providing the highest quality of compassionate, comprehensive, evidence-based healthcare and social services.”
A social worker for the past three decades, Evelyn Harrington has provided social, bereavement and crisis counseling for hospitals, employee assistance programs, community agencies and religious institutions. She has worked with culturally and socio-economically diverse populations, on a range of health issues, including HIV/AIDS, substance abuse and mental illness. During her career, she has improved access to housing, social, medical, and educational services for people with HIV/AIDS, cancer, cardiac illnesses, substance abuse, and mental illness, and provided help for victims of domestic violence, trauma and those dealing with end of life issues.
Yuridia Peña is the founder of Alta Consulting, a boutique public relations firm helping organizations achieve their public affairs and media relations goals. Ms. Peña has held communications roles in government, labor, corporate and nonprofit spaces. Most recently, she served as vice president of communications for SOMOS Community Care, a healthcare company serving nearly one-million Medicaid participants in New York. She successfully launched the organization’s patient-centered and multilingual mobile application MiSOMOS, organized a series of events for thousands of families across New York City and oversaw outreach efforts, as well as multilingual and culturally competent marketing campaigns. She holds a master’s degree in corporate communication from CUNY Baruch and a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from SUNY Purchase. She was named one of City & State’s 40 Under 40 Rising Stars of 2014, and received Congress member Yvette Clark’s 2016 Rising Star Award, and the Tri-State Diversity Council’s Healthcare Diversity Advocate Award of the Year in 2019.
Dee Dee Ricks is the founder of the Ricks Consulting Group, Inc., which advises hedge funds and family offices on strategy development and talent acquisition. Since the firm was founded in 1994, she has counseled leading multi-strategy firms during their growth and expansion phases into new asset classes and strategies. In addition, Ms. Ricks serves as chair of the board of the Harold P. Freeman Patient Navigation Institute (PNI), which supports patient navigation training and provides information to eliminate barriers to disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment. Ms. Ricks is a sought after inspirational speaker on mending the gap in access to quality healthcare, patient navigation, and entrepreneurship. Since her diagnosis with breast cancer and the debut of her HBO documentary, The Education of Dee Dee Ricks, she has given over 100 keynote addresses to Fortune 500 companies, foundations, and non-profit organizations.
Dr. Ashanda Myrna Saint Jean is an assistant professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC), and an attending physician at NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital and NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital. Since 2014, she has also served as the CUIMC’s YN specialist in female genital mutilation for asylum seekers. Dr. Saint Jean serves on numerous initiatives to reduce maternal mortality, including the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee; the Community & Population Health Outreach’s Maternal/Child Health Initiative and Maternal Mortality Collaborative; the Greater New York Hospital Association’s Project TEACH Maternal Mental Health Initiative and the Maternal Depression Quality Collective; and the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Bureau of Maternal Infant and Reproductive Health (BMIRH) Birth Justice- A Community-Driven Response to Maternal Mortality. She also serves on the board of Healthy Families America (HFA).
About START Treatment and Recovery Centers:
START has treated over 50,000 New Yorkers throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan since it was founded in 1969. Its goal is to provide the highest quality of compassionate, comprehensive, evidence-based healthcare and social services; education of the public concerning maintenance of healthy lifestyles; and cutting-edge behavioral, biomedical and healthcare services research. Its community-based treatment programs for adults and adolescents use individual and group counseling with medical and behavioral health professionals to treat patients; some of its clinics offer short-term, outpatient detoxification and a drug-free chemical dependency program for other non-opiate addictions. Its outpatient services and programs for people seeking quality treatment for drug addiction and rehabilitation include comprehensive medical care and specialized HIV services; behavioral health and vocational services; and medical case management. For more information, visit www.startny.org.
