Participating in the ceremonial check presentation, from left, are Mary Marrara, co-chair, The Wright Center for Patient & Community Engagement Board; Gerri McAndrew, director of development and relations for community outreach, The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education; and Lufrankton Network representatives Kristen Kleintop and Antonio Sequeira, Dunkin’ franchisee.
To help area children and families in need, The Wright Center for Patient & Community Engagement (PCE) was recently presented with a $2,500 donation from a regional Dunkin’ franchisee group and a matching gift from the Dunkin’ Joy in Childhood Foundation.
The $5,000 contribution will be reinvested in the community through PCE’s activities, such as school backpack giveaways, winter clothing, and blanket giveaways, free food distributions, and other special mission-driven projects.
The Lufrankton Network, a franchisee group that operates stores in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, chose PCE to receive charitable funding made available during its recent “Renovation Celebration” to highlight the makeover of its Dunkin’ location in Eynon.
The foundation generously doubled the gift because its mission – “to provide the simple joys of childhood to kids battling hunger or illness” – is reflected in many of PCE’s initiatives to assist children in Lackawanna, Luzerne, and nearby counties.
“We are grateful for this amazing support from Dunkin’,” said PCE Director Holly Przasnyski. “For its ongoing operation, the nonprofit PCE relies on external funding such as donations and fundraising. So, if it wasn’t for the kindness of civic-minded businesses like Dunkin’, we would not be able to conduct our events that help feed, clothe, and otherwise support the under-resourced children and their families in the communities we serve.”
PCE is a subsidiary of The Wright Center for Community Health. Employees of the health center volunteer to conduct its activities, which are intended to improve people’s access to health care and empower them to be co-managers of their health and wellness plans.
In particular, PCE strives to help Wright Center patients and others in the community overcome food insecurity and other non-medical issues that can affect their ability to focus on achieving and maintaining their maximum wellness. Those issues commonly include transportation barriers, lack of access to educational opportunities, homelessness, and poverty.
Dr. Supriana Bhandol, a family medicine physician, has joined The Wright Center for Community Health Scranton Practice where she will see patients of all ages, from pediatrics to geriatrics.
Dr. Bhandol will also serve as associate program director and physician faculty in The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education’s Regional Family Medicine Residency. She is a 2023 graduate of The Wright Center’s Regional Family Medicine Residency program where she had been the program’s chief resident physician.
Dr. Supriana Bhandol
Dr. Bhandol earned her medical degree from the Aureus University School of Medicine, Oranjestad, Aruba, and completed her medical school clinical rotations in Atlanta, Georgia. She is a 2013 alumna of the University of Victoria, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in biology and psychology.
Formerly of the West Coast of Canada, Dr. Bhandol has volunteered during each step of her professional journey, from assisting in nursing homes, tutoring fellow medical school students, to contributing to nonprofit organizations by helping to provide health care to underprivileged breast cancer survivors. She is fluent in English, Punjabi, and Hindi.
The Wright Center for Community Health operates 10 primary and preventive care practices in Northeast Pennsylvania. It treats individuals of all income levels and insurance statuses, including the underinsured and uninsured. No patient is turned away due to an inability to pay.
To schedule an appointment with Dr. Bhandol at the Scranton Practice, 501 S. Washington Ave., go to TheWrightCenter.org to use the express online scheduling system or call 570.941.0630.
The Wright Center for Community Health recently received recognition from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) for quality work last year in three performance categories, including its use of health information technology to better serve patients and their families.
The Wright Center also made notable achievements during 2022 in these two categories: providing services to combat the COVID-19 public health emergency and screening patients for social risk factors that can impact their health, such as lack of adequate housing and food insecurity.
HRSA annually reviews the performance data of health centers across the United States and then highlights the organizations that meet or exceed its goals in categories of special focus, such as improving health equity, access, and other quality measures. It bestows the top performers with its Community Health Quality Recognition badges.
HRSA first awarded badges in 2021, using data from the prior year’s reporting period. Since then, The Wright Center has earned 10 badges. This year, the three badges awarded to The Wright Center are “Advancing Health Information Technology for Quality,” “COVID-19 Public Health Champion,” and “Addressing Social Risk Factors to Health.”
HRSA displays information about all of its badge recipients – which include many of the country’s 1,370 Federally Qualified Health Centers and 117 Federally Qualified Health Center Look-Alikes, including The Wright Center – on an online dashboard accessible via its website, hrsa.gov. The Wright Center was among fewer than 12 percent of Look-Alikes nationwide to receive this year’s “Addressing Social Risk Factors to Health,” according to the dashboard.
The Wright Center operates 10 primary and preventive care practices in Northeast Pennsylvania, including a mobile medical and dental vehicle called Driving Better Health. Its practices offer integrated whole-person care, meaning patients typically have the convenience of going to a single location to access medical, dental, and behavioral health care, as well as community-based addiction treatment and recovery services. It accepts most major health insurance plans, including Medical Assistance (Medicaid), Medicare, and CHIP. No patient is turned away due to an inability to pay.
The Wright Center for Community Health is collaborating with Lackawanna Mobile X-Ray, Inc., to offer convenient mobile digital mammogram screenings at two locations in Lackawanna County.
Christen Marante, BSN, RN
The 15-minute appointments are available aboard a mobile unit at The Wright Center for Community Health Scranton Practice parking lot, 501 S. Washington Ave., from 9 a.m. to noon on Wednesday, Dec. 6. The Mid Valley Practice parking lot, 5 S. Washington Ave., Jermyn, is offering the specialty service from 1 to 5 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 6.
To reserve your appointment, please contact Christen Marante, BSN, RN, associate vice president, Value-Based Performance Program, The Wright Center, at 570-591-5225 or marantec@TheWrightCenter.org. Participants are asked to bring insurance cards to their appointment.
“The Wright Center is proud to be able to partner with a longtime community provider of mobile diagnostics services to make life-saving mammograms more accessible to the communities we serve in the region,” said Marante. “Mammograms remain the most effective screening tool used by health care providers to find breast cancer in most women.”
Lackawanna Mobile X-Ray, Inc., is the Mid-Atlantic region’s most experienced, full-service mobile diagnostics services provider.
For more than 35 years, its highly trained specialists have been providing a wide range of mobile medical services on-site, including X-rays, EKG exams, ultrasounds, vascular studies, mammograms, and Holter monitors.
A Federally Qualified Health Center Look-Alike, The Wright Center for Community Health’s patient-centered medical home is an essential community provider of safety-net primary and preventive health services, a state-designated Opioid Use Disorder Center of Excellence, and a Ryan White HIV/AIDS Clinic. The Wright Center for Community Health’s nine locations in Lackawanna, Luzerne, and Wayne counties include a mobile medical and dental unit called Driving Better Health that together serve more than 40,000 unique patients annually and ensures everyone in the service area has access to integrated, affordable, high-quality health services regardless of their insurance status, ZIP code, or ability to pay.For more information about The Wright Center for Community Health, go to TheWrightCenter.org or call 570-230-0019.
Carmen Passaniti, a veteran paramedic and longtime volunteer with the Dalton Fire Co., joined The Wright Center for Community Health as its director of employee health and continuing medical education coordinator. The post allows him to pursue his passion to serve the community by spreading knowledge about CPR and other life-saving techniques.
The American Heart Association-designated site will offer CPR and related courses to professionals and people wanting skills to respond in cardiac emergency
Longtime paramedic Carmen Passaniti knows that saving the life of a person in cardiac arrest often depends on what happens even before emergency responders arrive on the scene.
“If someone doesn’t start CPR,” he says, “the chance of a successful outcome is very, very small. Without that early intervention – without basic life support – nothing really matters.”
Passaniti recently joined The Wright Center for Community Health, where he is leading an effort to provide various levels of life support training to anyone in the region who wants or needs it, ranging from hospital and health center employees to people with no connection to the medical field.
The Wright Center recently became an American Heart Association (AHA) training site, allowing it to begin delivering important services to the communities it serves in Northeast Pennsylvania. For professionals who are required to get certifications and recertifications, it will provide affordable trainings in Basic Life Support, Heartsaver CPR, Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS), Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS), and Pediatric Emergency Assessment, Recognition and Stabilization (PEARS).
At the American Heart Association training site operated by The Wright Center for Community Health, the aim is to provide life support training to anyone in the region who wants or needs it. In addition to Basic Life Support, there will be courses for professionals who require certification, or recertification, in Advance Cardiovascular Life Support, Pediatric Advanced Life Support and other levels of training.
For beginners, Passaniti will cover topics such as how to identify the signs of sudden cardiac arrest and how to use an automated external defibrillator, the device used to jolt a heart back into rhythm. All trainings will adhere to the AHA’s training site guidelines, which are widely considered the gold standard.
By establishing the new training site, The Wright Center will be able to efficiently certify and recertify its own employees, including physicians, nurses, and other clinicians, while addressing broader community needs.
A well-established AHA training center in Lackawanna County recently ended operations, leaving emergency responders, college students enrolled in health care programs, daycare workers, pharmacists, and others searching for options.
The debut of The Wright Center’s training site also coincides with a surge in public interest in CPR certification programs. A high-profile incident involving NFL player Damar Hamlin, who was resuscitated on the football field during a nationally televised game in January, brought the reality of cardiac arrest into people’s living rooms.
“When it happens in a very public venue such as a Monday Night Football game with millions of people watching, it kind of brings more people to the classroom,” says Passaniti. “They say, ‘Maybe I should learn how to do that.’ Because it can truly make a difference.”
Hamlin, who survived the incident and has since resumed playing, has partnered with the AHA to issue a social media challenge, the “Damar Hamlin #3forHeart CPR Challenge.” The campaign urges participants to do three things: learn “hands-only” CPR, donate to AHA in support of CPR education and training, and encourage three friends to do the same.
Any first-timers who attend Passaniti’s basic-level training courses are coached in not only the skills they need but also the confidence. Many novices are understandably concerned that if they help a stranger in an emergency, they might do more harm than good. Others worry they might expose themselves to legal liability. Passaniti explains there are Good Samaritan laws in each state to protect helpers, and intervention is crucial for these life-and-death situations.
“Anything you do is a positive,” he says. “People may be worried about doing the technique wrong, they’re worried about causing injury. But it’s better to try. Some CPR is better than no CPR.”
More than 350,000 cardiac arrests occur outside of hospital settings each year in the United States, according to the AHA. Yet in only about 40 percent of those cases do the victims get the immediate help they need before the arrival of emergency responders.
CPR, if administered immediately, can double or triple a person’s chance of survival, according to the AHA.
That’s why people like Passaniti are eager to spread training throughout the community, increasing the odds that life-saving help might be close at hand when needed at homes, houses of worship, workplaces, sports fields, and other social spaces.
‘Chain of survival’
Passaniti, 65, seems perfectly suited for his new role at The Wright Center, where he works among many familiar faces.
“I’ve known Carmen for years,” says Sheila Ford, vice president of quality, safety, and enterprise policy compliance and integrity. “All of our doctors know him. For decades our physicians and residents, as well as clinical staff, have received BLS, ACLS and PALS training with Carmen.”
“Carmen, has just been a pillar of the community” she adds, “Our clinicians value his expertise with the American Heart Association’s gold standard for life support certifications. Creating a clinical community gold standard is important for the patients and the communities we serve.”
In 1972, at age 14, he became a junior firefighter for the Dalton Fire Company, where he continues to serve to this day as ambulance captain. In both volunteer and paid capacities, he has devoted decades to protecting lives and property. He served as a paramedic in Lackawanna County during the pioneering days of the profession. In addition to responding to calls, he then became active in managing training programs to properly prepare others who work in the emergency response field throughout Northeast Pennsylvania.
Passaniti now holds the title of director of employee health and continuing medical education coordinator at The Wright Center. His duties include overseeing the health aspects of the new employees’ onboarding requirements and ensuring employees remain up to date on health mandates such as vaccinations.
At age 14, Carmen Passaniti joined the Dalton Fire Company as a junior firefighter. Today, at 65, he continues his track record of volunteer service with the organization as its ambulance chief, helping to train and nurture the next generation of selfless community servants.
He will also spearhead a two-year effort to have The Wright Center’s new training site designated as an AHA training center, a distinction earned by training a certain number of people annually and meeting other standards.
“Carmen is so passionate and committed to it,” adds Ford. “And he’s done this before. This is not a road he hasn’t traveled.”
Passaniti was deeply involved in managing the former Community Life Support ambulance company and the recently closed Commonwealth Health EMS (CHEMS) training center, where he had been clinical manager.
Even as he reaches an age at which many people opt to retire, the West Abington Township resident feels compelled to continue to conduct trainings, so he can teach and inspire younger generations. “It’s something I truly enjoy doing,” Passaniti says.
He also knows that, for some of the people he trains, there will be more at stake than a feeling of accomplishment or a certification. A life will hang in the balance. A fast-acting family member or bystander will step in, use their training, and forge the first link in a so-called “chain of survival” that begins with basic life support and connects to skilled emergency responders and, finally, to hospital professionals.
The outcome, while never certain, can be spectacular.
“Someone is going to see their family again,” says Passaniti. “They’ll leave the hospital neurologically intact and go home with the same quality of life.”
For information about life support training available through The Wright Center for Community Health’s AHA training site, contact Carmen Passaniti at passanitic@TheWrightCenter.org or call 570-335-3307. Training is available in the communities The Wright Center serves in Northeast Pennsylvania.
Dr. Ashley Zhan, a resident physician training at The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education, is joining with the national “Be The Match” campaign to add individuals to its donor registry and potentially save the lives of people with blood cancers such as lymphoma and leukemia.
Dr. Zhan, who is in her third year of The Wright Center’s four-year psychiatry residency, has organized a blood stem cell donor registration event that will be open to her colleagues as well as the public.
The event is scheduled from noon to 2 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 9, in the auditorium of The Wright Center for Community Health Scranton Practice, 501 S. Washington Ave.
Dr. Ashley Zhan
Participants between the ages of 18 and 35 will be asked to complete an online registration form and submit a DNA sample using a cheek swab kit, which is then mailed to the “Be The Match” registry. The entire registration process, including the 20-second swab, takes only a few minutes.
“It’s quick and easy,” says Dr. Zhan. “There are going to be volunteers on hand to help facilitate everything and answer questions.”
This and similar registration events elsewhere – which are often held on college campuses and promoted by encouraging young adults to “give a spit” – help to raise awareness about blood cancers and the need for genetically matched blood stem cell donors.
Someone in the United States is diagnosed with blood cancer every three minutes, according to “Be The Match.” In certain cases, cancer patients can pursue a cure by turning to a family member, typically a brother or sister, who matches their human leukocyte antigen, or HLA, type, and agrees to provide stem cells or bone marrow.
“However, 70% of patients do not have a fully matched donor in their family” and need to search more widely, according to information from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration.
Dr. Zhan and others who are keenly aware of health disparities facing the nation’s Black, Latino, and other minority populations are quick to emphasize that a patient is far more likely to match with a person of the same ethnic background, making it essential that the potential donor pool be richly diverse.
“There’s a great need for people of color, people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, to join the registry,” Dr. Zahn says.
If you join the registry and are determined to be a potential match, you will be contacted for further evaluation. The vast majority of people who are ultimately selected as donors will give blood stem cells during a process very similar to donating plasma. In 10 percent of cases, donors will be asked to provide bone marrow through a surgical procedure.
This marks the second year in a row that Dr. Zhan, a graduate of the Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, has conducted a “Be The Match” event at The Wright Center’s primary and preventive care practice in Scranton’s South Side neighborhood. At last year’s event, she and other volunteers registered 25 people.
For more information about joining the “Be The Match” registry, or to sign up to receive a swab kit at home, visit bethematch.org.
