The EAC was founded in 2014 as the Ebola Action Committee during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. We were a small group of medical students dedicated to turning the media’s focus to where humanitarian aid and medical relief was needed: Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. Together, we created the #EndTheOutbreak campaign. The campaign was broad in its aims, including advocacy, social media awareness, fundraising, and supply collection. Ultimately, we raised over $6,000 and sent 150 (quite large) boxes to two partner health center in Liberia. You can read more about the specifics of our work on Ebola relief under “past projects.”

Cover photo for our social media campaign #EndTheOutbreak.

Because the #EndTheOutbreak movement was so successful and global health relief work was something we felt so strongly about, we decided to turn our group into a disaster relief group. As such, in the Spring of 2015, we created a new name for ourselves: the Emergency Action Committee. Luckily we were able to keep the acronym that we are known by, the EAC.

In April, after the earthquake in Nepal, we hosted a Southeast Asian-Themed fundraising dinner, to raise money for the Health Foundation Nepal, a non-profit organization founded by a Mount Sinai resident. We raised over $600 for the Health Foundation Nepal, which went toward purchasing and distributing supplies to affected villages. 

Shivani Kastuar (MD, 2018) and Katie Arden (Md, 2017), tabling at Mount Sinai Hospital to solicit donations and signatures for our petition.

In the fall of 2015, we grew from a nebulous group of friends committed to advocacy and disaster relief, into a more organized group, maintaining our same goals. You can read about what we are currently up to under “current projects.”