Before NASCAR drivers hit the gas this weekend at the Chicago Street Race, one driver made pit stops Thursday at local hospitals to visit patients.
NASCAR driver Harrison Burton delivered blankets to patients at Lurie Children’s Hospital and Mount Sinai Hospital. He also presented $10,000 checks to each hospital, donated by the NASCAR Foundation.
Burton posed for photos with patients and “Blue Bear,” mascot of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois.
“I feel bad because I’m not the biggest star in the world. I’m like, you guys deserve Michael Jordan,” said Burton, 22, who will be driving in Sunday’s Cup.
Claudine Duran, 54, has been receiving chemotherapy at Mount Sinai for six months. She posed for a photo with Burton and Blue Bear, and shouted, “I love the bear!”
Burton was greeted at Mount Sinai by Dr. Ngozi Ezike, president and CEO of Sinai Chicago and former director of the Illinois Department of Public Health.
Ezike thanked NASCAR and Blue Cross Blue Shield for highlighting the work of Sinai Chicago. The hospital system treats people who have few resources but face the greatest health risks, she said.
The average life span in Lawndale, where Mount Sinai is located, is over a dozen years less than where the NASCAR race is being held downtown.
“Just driving a couple of miles, you’ll see a 15-year death gap, life expectancy gap,” Ezike said. “We’re really trying to see how we can narrow that because we want everybody to live a full life.”
Pam Khosla, chief of hematology and oncology at Sinai, said one of her patients had just “shed a few tears” because of the work done by the safety-net hospital.
“It is more rewarding than anything,” she said. “When you can make someone smile that came to you with no other resources makes a huge difference.”
She thanked NASCAR and Blue Cross Blue Shield for being partners in that work.
After the blankets were passed out and the checks presented, Ezike reflected on her transition from the public sector. One year ago, Ezike left her post as the state’s top doctor after serving through the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m doing the same work, just in a different venue,” said Ezike, who now leads the hospital network based on the West Side.
She said her mission is still to make health care attainable for everyone, but now she can focus on people struggling the most to get it.
“Doing it on the macro level, at the state level during the pandemic — making sure that everyone has the testing resources or has the vaccine — that’s one thing. But now I have a very well-circumscribed area. I don’t have 12.7 million people; I can focus on the 1.5 million that makes this community their home.”
She compared the disparity of resources of patients at Sinai to those at Lurie Children’s, where NASCAR officials had visited earlier in the morning.
“Not the same edifice, not the same patients, but it doesn’t mean these patients need any less. In fact, they need more. For many reasons, those patients are often more serious. So really figuring out everyone has what they need, that’s what it’s about.”
