RECENT NEWS
RECENT NEWS
Kenneth R. Alleyne is an orthopedic surgeon and vice chair of the Connecticut Health Foundation.
As America fights its war against the novel coronavirus, there is a separate battle being fought by African Americans. This battle finds them outmatched, underresourced, undersupported and undertested. It is a fight none would call fair. As The Post reported this month, in the United States “counties that are majority-black have three times the rate of infections and almost six times the rate of deaths as counties where white residents are in the majority.” New York City’s health department recently released data showing that black residents are twice as likely to die of covid-19 as white residents. The coronavirus has further exposed the reality of racial health disparities in the United States.
I am a board-certified African American orthopedic surgeon. I continue to see patients and care for trauma cases, but I am not on the front line of this fight. My practice encompasses patients from some of the wealthiest Zip codes in Manhattan and from some of the poorest in rural and inner-city Connecticut. My wife, also a physician, works at a care facility for underserved areas, known as a federally qualified health center. It is from these perspectives I observe the inequities deeply rooted in the nation’s health-care system
HARTFORD, Conn. (June 29, 2020) – The Connecticut Health Foundation elected Kenneth R. Alleyne as chair of its board of directors. He succeeds David I. Newton in chairing the board of Connecticut’s largest independent health philanthropy.
Alleyne, of West Hartford, is a sports medicine orthopedic surgeon practicing in Connecticut and Manhattan. He is the co-founder of Zing Health, a Medicare Advantage plan, and HartHaven Partners, a health care investment firm. He is a member of the board of the UConn Health Center, Connecticut Public Television and Radio, and Louis Armstrong Education Foundation. He served on the Community Committee of the state’s Reopen Connecticut Advisory Group.
Alleyne is a graduate of Williams College and Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
“It is a tremendous honor and sober undertaking to chair the foundation at this time of pandemic that has disproportionately affected Connecticut’s minority and low-income communities,” Alleyne said. “As been our history, we will continue to focus on the improvement to challenges of health care access, equity and justice. Our goal continues to be the elimination of health disparities for the next generation of Connecticut residents.”
In addition to electing a new chair, the foundation board appointed two new members and awarded $342,025 in grants this quarter.
Dr. Kenneth Alleyne, 46, and his wife, Dr. Shaun Biggers-Alleyne, love jazz. They also love Martha’s Vineyard. So they began brainstorming a way to combine these seemingly disparate passions. The result was Jazz on the Vineyard, a daylong jazz festival now in its second year, which will be held tomorrow, August 18, at Featherstone Center for the Arts in Oak Bluffs.
When planning the event the Alleynes wondered how readily people would “burn a beach day” on jazz music. As an added incentive they founded Student Achievement through Opportunity (SATO), a nonprofit organization aimed at narrowing the “opportunity gap” for students in Dr. Alleyne’s hometown of Hartford, Conn. This way audience members can enjoy the music while simultaneously supporting underprivileged youth.
By Gwyn McAllister – August 8, 2018
Jazz fans — and music lovers of every ilk — will be flocking to the Tabernacle this weekend for a performance by one of the world’s pre-eminent jazz vocalists, multiple Grammy awardwinner Dianne Reeves.
The concert is the annual offering by SATO (Student Achievement Through Opportunity), a Connecticut-based nonprofit that partners with schools and educators to provide academic and cultural opportunities,and raise achievement levels for minority students.
For the past eight years, SATO founder and director Dr. Kenneth Alleyne has brought some of the world’s top jazz musicians to the Vineyard through his fundraising effort, Jazz on the Vineyard. Previous concerts were held at the Featherstone Center for the Arts and the Martha’s Vineyard Museum. This year, the event has been bumped up to a much larger venue, and Alleyne is expecting an audience of at least 600 people.