SBH Health System Celebrates Its 150th Year By Breaking Ground with New TV Commercial

SBH Health System will introduce a new, breakthrough TV commercial this month on local television stations when it airs an animated spot chronicling its 150 years of caring for the Bronx.  The commercial was created by advertising agency Weinrib & Connor of White Plains.

“For over 150 years, at the center of Arthur Avenue, is a place where people get healthy and stay healthy,” says the narrator, as animation takes the audience through the changes and expansion of the hospital since it opened in 1866, just five years after the end of the Civil War. “You know, St. Barnabas Hospital. No matter how you got here, SBH welcomes you. Over the years, our doors have opened wider and wider to our diverse community, providing compassionate and comprehensive care. At St. Barnabas, we will always make you feel like you are at the heart of the Bronx.”

Images of doctors, nurses and other members of the SBH staff are superimposed near the end of the spot, which closes with a blimp with the letters SBH watching over the Bronx.

The voice of the narrator may sound familiar.  It’s Chazz Palminteri, the star and creator of the movie (and soon to be Broadway play) A Bronx Tale, who spent most of his young life a stone’s throw from the hospital.

“We looked at animation as the best way to show the hospital’s growth over this time and convey the balance of the old with the new,” said Mary Connor, President of Weinrib & Connor. “Animation appeals to the child in all of us. We believe those who see this spot will remember it for the love, care and compassion this hospital brings to the population it serves.”

An expanded version of the commercial was aired last week at the hospital’s 150^th gala at the New York Botanical Gardens as a way to introduce the capital campaign for its $156 million mixed-use project. Included will be affordable housing and a health and wellness center that is intended to change the way people in the Bronx, the state’s 62^nd and least healthy county, look at health care.  The development will include an urgent care center, women’s and pediatric services, and a fitness center, all operated by SBH, as well as a rooftop farm, a greenhouse to grow produce, and a teaching kitchen to educate patients, students and staff.  Space will be rented to a local pharmacy that will not sell cigarettes or alcohol, and to a green grocer who will sell healthy foods.