7th Annual Fastathon!

Welcome to the official blog for Mount Sinai School of Medicine's Fastathon 2012, which will take place September 19, 2012. This annual event was started 7 years ago by two medical students, Mubashar Khan and Faraaz Shah, as a way to tie the Muslim tradition of Ramadan (where Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset for one month) with community service and supporting EHHOP's mission of providing healthcare to those in the East Harlem community. The Fastathon itself has two components:

1) students pledge to fast from dawn to dusk
2) sponsors pledge an amount per faster (or flat sum) to donate.

All proceeds are donated to the East Harlem Health Outreach Partnership (EHHOP) to fund medications, social work, and referrals for EHHOP patients. Since 2004, EHHOP has provided no cost primary care for over 600 uninsured residents of East Harlem.

The last six Fastathons have raised over $30,000 for EHHOP. For this year's 7th Annual Fastathon, we have set 130 fasting participants as our recruitment goal and $10,000 as our fundraising goal. These are both ambitious goals, but with the collective effort of the Sinai community, we fully anticipate achieving both. Last year, we set a goal of $7500 and reached $9777, so $10,000 should be doable with your help!

You can see the success of Fastathon 2011 and learn more about the East Harlem Health Outreach Partnership. Feel free to direct any questions to mr.fastathon@gmail.com.

2012 Fastathon Planning Committee:
Alexandra Bachorik, MS II
Timothy Cashman, MSTPIV
David Chiang, MSTP IV
Rajan Dang, MS II