Good Samaritan Hospital public relations director Deborah Marshall was one of five finalists in the national Public Relations Professional of the Year contest in the category of Non-Profit/Association by PR News, an industry group.

She was cited for her professionalism and advocacy in the effort to bring a new cardiac surgery center to the Suffern hospital.

Marshall was honored at a luncheon earlier this month in Washington, D.C.

Planned Parenthood centers throughout the Lower Hudson Valley are offering movie passes and T-shirts as incentives for people to get tested for the HIV virus tomorrow and Saturday as part of World AIDS Day.

Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic centers in Mount Kisco, Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, Spring Valley, White Plains, and Yonkers are offering the tests, which gives results in about 20 minutes.

No flu yet in Rockland, but Putnam has reported its first cases, according to the New York State Department of Health. Westchester has already had several confirmed cases of influenza. The illness has been reported in numerous counties thorughout the state, including Nassau, Suffolk, New York City, and upstate Montgomery, Broome, Onondaga, Oneida, Erie and Monroe counties. Flu season usually reaches its highest levels in Februuary, but the disease can be reported as early as October and as late as April. Flu vaccine are still available. Call your doctor of your local health department.

New Rochelle doctor will become the next president and chief executive officer of Montefiore Medical Center, the hospital announced this morning.

Safyer, 58, will succeed retiring Montefiore president Dr. Spencer Foreman. Safyer will take the reins on Jan. 7, 2008.

As senior vice president and chief medical officer for the hospital since 1998, Safyer has directed all clinical operations of Montefiore’s integrated delivery systems and has overseen the faculty, academic programs and clinical information systems. Sayfer is also a professor of medicine and epidemiology and population health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Sayfer received a bachelor’s of science degree from Cornell University and his medical degree from Albert Einstein. He board-certified in internal medicine and is a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine. He is a founding chairman of the Bronx Regional Health Information Organization, an independent, not-for-profit community-based group that focuses on health information technology exchange.

Safyer is married to Paula Marcus, M.D.; and they have two daughters.

Rockland marks World AIDS Day by giving out information about the disease at Rockland Community College. The Department of Health will have displays and information about AIDS from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. Thursday in the atrium at Rockland Community College. The department will also offer rapid HIV testing, which gives results in 20 minutes.

If you’re stomach is still full from the Thanksgiving fest, or left-overs, you may want to help the digestive process along.

Drinking herbal tea and plenty of water typically helps me the day after a big meal while my husband likes to exercise. I know others who make eating fiber a high priority.

Everyone’s different.

Here’s a list of natural digestive remedies I found this morning on a natural living Web site called Alive.

More health insurance companies have signed agreements with the office of New York state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo on doctor rankings.

UnitedHealthcare, including Oxford, and GHI/HIP have agreed to fully disclose to consumers and physicians all aspects of their ranking system. Under the deal with the attorney general, the insurers will also hire an oversight monitor who will oversee compliance with all aspects of the agreement.

Physicians nationwide have complained that insurer doctor-ranking programs steer patients to doctors whose costs are the lowest, not whose qualities is the highest.

The deal with the attorney general requires that rankings for doctors are not based solely on cost.

Other insurance companies that have reached agreements with the state in the past several weeks include CIGNA Healthcare, Aetna and Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield.

A total of 41,791 people in Westchester (33,281), Rockland (6,140) and Putnam (2,370) belong to GHI-HIP.

A total of 18,790 people in Westchester (13,686), Rockland (3,772) and Putnam (1,332) belong to Unitedhealthcare, which includes Oxford.

New suites opened in Northern Yonkers today boasting sweeping Hudson River views, flat-screen televisions and iPod and Internet-ready docking stations.

No, it’s not a new high-rise luxury condo building. Welcome to the new and improved maternity ward at St. John’s Riverside Hospital.

About 50 people including local politicians, doctors and hospital officials turned out for a ribbon-cutting ceremony of the $2-million-facility this morning.

“You wouldn’t go on a business trip and share a room, so why would you ask a woman to share a room during the most important time in her life?” said the hospital’s CEO Jim Foi.

The 5,000-square-foot facility on the hospital’s third floor was made possible through a $1-million-dollar donation from the Carvel Foundation. All of the construction work was done in-house, which kept costs relatively low, Foi said.

Complete with earth-tone wallpaper and new tiled bathrooms, the rooms make a 2-day stay after childbirth a calm one. The single-occupancy rooms aim to give families privacy to bond during the first days of a child’s life.

“Maternity is the hallmark of the hospital. It’s the beginning, hopefully, of a long relationship with the doctors and nurses here,” said Dr. Shahram Razman, director of the hospital’s OB/GYN department. “And, as you know, the woman makes all the decisions in the family, so they will come and share with their friends the good experience here.

So far, 14 beds are ready and may be occupied as early as next week. The second phase of the project, which is convert the double-occupancy rooms on the other side of the maternity department is slated to begin soon.

And no, it’s not part of the Capelli redevelopment plan. Or is it? With new professional singles and couples moving into apartments on the Yonkers waterfront it certainly makes you think about the market for moms and babies.

Everyone knows that Thursday is Thanksgiving. But how many people know that it’s also National Family History Day?

The Surgeon General declared Thanksgiving a dual occasion in 2004 in an effort to encourage families to discuss their health histories. Most people know that knowing their family health history is important, but few have ever tried to gather and write down the information.

The Surgeon General and other federal agencies have developed a tool for recording family health information. It can be accessed at My Family Health Portrait. The survey asks questions about diseases and conditions that people in the family have, the age at which they were diagnosed as well as other information.

People who fill out the survey can save it on their own computers, or print it out for future reference.

Other tools and information about family genetic history can be found at the CDC’s National Office of Public Health Genomics.

Plenty of food for thought around the Thanksgiving table.

An organization that trains women to offer information and support to others who have ovarian cancer has gotten funding from the New York State Department of Health to expand its training programs into Westchester and Rockland counties.

SHARE volunteers provide peer support, information and resources to people who call its hotline. Most callers are women who have been diagnosed with ovarian cancer or who have suspicious symptoms.

The hotline provides services in English and Spanish and maintains a pool of volunteer translators who can assist callers in 10 different languages. The toll-free New York State Ovarian Cancer Hotline was established last year in conjunction with the American Cancer Society with funding from a court approved settlement of antitrust claims brought by the New York State Attorney General.

Over the course of the year, volunteers from communities throughout the state received training, and 24 are currently serving on the hotline.

The new funds will be used to provide continued support and training to volunteers as well as to expand the program into Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester and Rockland counties with the goal of identifying and training more volunteers.

Women who wish to speak with an ovarian cancer survivor can call the toll free Ovarian Cancer Hotline at 1-866-53SHARE (1-866-537-4273). For more information go to the group’s website at www.sharecancersupport.org.