 Pastoral care is very important for everyone that touches the lives of patients, patients families, staff. We have outstanding doctors, we have fabulous nurses, but there still is that element that's necessary for a wholeness of wellness and that is the chaplaincy program. You can get medication to take care of the physical. You can do surgical procedures, but oftentimes it's the will to survive and the feeling that people care and then someone cares allows the individual to help them heal themselves. Pastoral care, spiritual care, chaplaincy care, because they run interchangeably, teaches us that it's about caring for the human spirit, but I really see it as not just caring for the spirit but making a soulful connection. Pastoral care is extremely important and it makes a difference not only for the individual but also for the family members and so it's a very important part of the healing process. Whether they're living or dying, the quality of the connections are really important. We provide pastoral care so that people know they matter. Well, my father was on the board for 60 years. The year was an individual who was part of a family that had been committed to the health care community in Long Island for many years and it made a tremendous difference, but what she did was identify a need that has not been taken care of and she helped lead the effort to address the spiritual side of our health care initiative and made a very unique contribution to the hospital. I've known Theo Houten, just a lovely person for all the years that I've been on the board and she is the most charming, stalwart person of the interests and went through and now NYU went through. She's a caring individual but she is a determined individual to make things happen. She's a very committed person. She has very strong beliefs. She's sort of the epitome of pastoral care. Very warm, welcoming, encouraging, uplifting. She always made me as the director feel like she had your back. Stylistically, she's a wonderful person also to be part of an organization because she does walk through walls but she does it with grace and dignity. Well, she's also the first lady to be a vice chairman of the board. She was one who demonstrated essentially that ladies should be an important part of the government structure and she was the first in the leader there so she's been a good role model in that regard. She has sort of been a guiding light. She has observed and cared for and suggested different ways that the committee could be more involved, stronger, or expansive. And so one of the first things that had to be done was if we're going to have a chaplaincy program it would be nice to have a chapel. We didn't have any space and so she worked with the administration to find a place to have a home and this is where in the chapel today. It's a welcoming space for anybody regardless of their faith tradition what they believe or whether or not they have a specific practice. We've got two rooms outside the chapel that are used for consultation rooms with doctors and families and sometimes with grieving families. We're able to have live broadcasts from the chapel of the services, the public services that are held here which go straight to the patient's room. The hospital also has a Sabbath house for family members of patients of the Jewish faith. You also have to have the commitment to recruit a number of people for the chaplain program to raise money and to also support and champion a new activity in the hospital and she was very effective in that regard. She was at every meeting and always lent her good advice and her astute management abilities to be able to lead the committee in the proper direction. If you're going to make something happen you got to be willing to go forward and say this is a role that should be done this is a need for the hospital and convince other people to do it and she was very successful in that. She has always given us the insight into the fact that the chaplain program is for the staff as well. The chapel itself is a spot that the staff who was under a lot of daily stress can take a moment and go and meditate or pray. Staff also have drama and trauma in their own lives. They also experience bereavement and death. Staff chaplains are assigned to the various units and when they go on the units they might meet in huddles or they might be invited to hold a spiritual support group for that team and then sometimes they're individual sessions. We are very conscious and intentional about when we go on the units to ask staff how they're doing. We also have bereavement support groups for employees only. Very similar in structure to the support groups we offer for the public but they're for employees only for various reasons but mainly for hip-hop reasons. We want the employees to feel like they have complete confidence in talking about whatever they want to talk about. Over the past 20 years I think the department has grown to be a bona fide profession in itself. Our chaplains are all board certified or board certified eligible which means they have all of their credentialing. We have a number of chaplains, three full-time staff chaplains including myself. We are part of the code, trauma, rapid response team. We're on the bioethics committee. We're part of the critical incident stress management team. We're very integrated into the life of the hospital. I love this work because it helps me to be with people in life and death situations. They're not always dying sometimes they're celebrating life but you can get this at its core in this hospital. In addition to that I love the fact that we do outreach to the community so it's not just what we do around the walls of the hospital but outside the hospital so I say we provide pastoral care at the bedside and beyond. I think Theo would like to see the chaplaincy program going forward to become more involved. The future of pastoral care is very important. My vision for the pastoral care department here at NYU Winfrey is to establish greater collaboration with Brooklyn Langone and NYU Langone. We can learn a lot from each other and so I'd like to see us share more resources ideas and eventually go back to the model where we began with the clinical pastoral education program. Theo congratulations on this very deserving and wonderful award. Your interest in the hospital and the chaplaincy program and even in me as an individual and other individuals around the hospital has been greatly appreciated and greatly beneficial. Thanks for all you do. Congratulations Mrs. Hooten on receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award. I appreciate your constant encouragement and inspiration in this work and I appreciate the opportunity to be the director of the Pastoral Care Department and it's because of you. Thank you so much. Theo you're a very unique individual. You're caring but you're persuasive and you're committed and I greatly appreciate all that you've done for your hospital, for your family and for the community. Thank you. It's mind-boggling. It means a lot to me because of my father's involvement and my service to the hospital.