How a Martha Stewart-backed centre is rethinking elderly care

Martha Stewart has built a career on recipes, home projects and a business empire. Through all of it, one thing has stayed the same: she cares. She showed it in 2007, when she helped launch the Martha Stewart Center for Living at Mount Sinai Hospital on the Upper East Side. She cared about good food, and she cared about people, especially older people who need the most help. Though her work in New York hospitals gets less attention than her television shows and products, it reaches a group that struggles every day: older adults who manage chronic illnesses, daily tasks and worried families.Martha Stewart Center for LivingIn 2007, she gifted Mount Sinai the Martha Stewart Center for Living. Her inspiration was her mother, Martha Kostyra, who lived an active life until the age of 93. She wanted everyone to enjoy that same sense of well-being as they grew older. The goal was to treat older people as whole individuals, not just as a list of diagnoses.In 2019, a second centre opened downtown at 10 Union Square. Here, patients can see specialists in more than 20 fields, including cardiology, gastroenterology, cancer care, dermatology, orthopaedics and rheumatology. Radiology and physical...