Rafaela Prifti/
Jacobi Medical Center will open a Cardiovascular Clinic to specifically cater to the Albanian residents in the Norwood, Belmont and Pelham Parkway sections of the Bronx in September. Dr. Eleonora Gashi-Baraliu will lead the Albanian Cardiovascular Clinic. Currently she is the director of Cardiovascular Consultative Services and Quality for Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at Jacobi. The Albanian Cardiovascular Clinic will look after the heart health of the patients while also focusing on educating them on the benefits of proactive behavior or self-care regimen.
Dr. Gashi-Baraliu’s ethnic background renders her a natural ‘insider” into the culture and importantly into the attitude toward health issues. Studies show that heart disease is one of the leading killers in the Albanian community, that largely resides in the Bronx borough of New York. Within its neighborhoods, the most Albanian residents are in Pelham Parkway with 4,766, Bedford Park 1,387, Riverdale 998, Co-op City 844, Belmont 538, Wakefield 467, and Castle Hill 238, and many other areas with smaller amounts, according to the 2016 American Community Survey (ACS).
“As an immigrant who trained in Manhattan for general and interventional cardiology, my eye was always towards the Albanian community in the Bronx,” she said for the Bronx Times.
Aside from cardiology services, ACC will offer cardiovascular consultations, echocardiograms, holter monitoring, treadmill exercise stress tests, nuclear stress tests, stress echo, coronary CT angiography, cardiac MRIs, diagnostic angiograms and percutaneous coronary interventions.
Most of the patients will be referrals from Illyria Clinic. Reports say that on a weekly average 20-30 of its patients are in need of cardiology services. Dr. Gashi-Baraliu, who has been with Jacobi since 2018, is confident Albanian residents will come to the clinic as an easy transfer from the general cardiology clinics at the hospital.
According to the doctor, the ACC allows for “patients to have the cultural comfort and eliminates communication as a barrier to health care disparity,” which in turn helps to facilitate their attending to their health issues.
Aiming to promote healthier lifestyle habits, the facility will conduct educational sessions for the whole community. In the last two decades, Illyria Medical Practive at Jacobi Medical Center has been serving the health needs of the Albanian population of the borough which saw an increase in demographics after the Kosovo war.