Healthcare Champion of the Year

Julie Blumenfeld, DNP, CNM, is director of the nurse-midwifery programs at Rutgers University and is a certified nurse-midwife in Trenton, New Jersey. For more than two decades, she has worked with newly immigrated, Spanish-speaking families to expand access to culturally responsive maternal care. She founded Cultivando una Nueva Alianza (CUNA), a prenatal education and support program that has served more than 1,000 women and helped develop a Spanish-language community doula program that has trained 43 doulas and supported more than 500 families.

Julie’s approach is rooted in listening to communities and building solutions with them. People who have participated in the programs she helped create have gone on to become doulas, community health workers and nurses themselves—extending the impact of her work and strengthening the network of care around families.

Dr. Joseph McGuirk leads hematologic malignancies, cellular therapeutics and blood and marrow transplant care at The University of Kansas Cancer Center. He helped bring early CAR-T research and later FDA-approved therapies to patients in the region, while helping grow the program from about 20 transplants annually to nearly 500 transplants and CAR-T therapies each year.

Joseph has led more than 40 clinical trials advancing stem cell transplantation and cellular therapies and is also working to expand access to these treatments in rural communities. Colleagues describe him as a collaborative leader and mentor who develops the people around him, shares credit across the care team and keeps the needs of patients at the center of decision-making.

Matt Ostroff, MSN, AGACNP, VA-BC, is an advanced practice nurse practitioner and founder of the vascular access program at St. Joseph’s Health in New Jersey. For patients whose conventional IV options have been exhausted, Matthew has helped rethink what is possible at the bedside. In 2015, he developed a mid-thigh femoral vein catheter approach, moving access away from the groin to a cleaner site intended to reduce infection risk and improve care for people with clotted, occluded or otherwise unusable upper-body veins. He published the technique and its outcomes, and the approach has since been adopted and studied internationally.

Matt has contributed to 27 peer-reviewed publications and coauthored research examining more than 29,000 ultrasound-guided IV placements. He has also taught clinicians on five continents and is exploring new technologies to help more health workers build these skills. His work reflects a combination of persistence, practical innovation and a focus on making the experience of care better for patients.