The Living Heart Foundation (LHF) was privileged to be invited by the New York Police Officers to perform heart and lung health screening of 1,760 officers during the first month following the 9/11 World Trade Center terrorist act. The screenings were held on-site at the Police Academy in New York City. Since the initial health screenings concluded in October 2001, the New York Police Department has been unable to endorse a particular foundation according to their internal regulations.   Thus, the LHF is acting independently in its continuing support of the men and women police officers who consented to receive health screenings from the LHF.  The LHF continues to track the health conditions of the surviving officers since the late effects of the 9/11 exposure are unpredictable. Initially, a randomly selected cohort of 600 individual men and women members of the initial LHF health screening group were analyzed for their health status within less than a month after 9/11.   The clinical findings have been submitted for presentation and publications.  In April 2003, a telephone contact follow-up was done utilizing 600 surviving members of  New York Police Officers 9/11 responders. These combined evaluations showed that significant cardiac, pulmonary, and mental health abnormalities persist 1.7 years from the 9/11 insult.

The LHF has expanded its medical team since the first health screenings of the New York Police Officers immediately following 9/11. The Penn State Medical School and its Divisions of Pulmonary Medicine and Health Sciences have become the electronic database and scientific analysis partner for the LHF. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and its Department of Environmental Medicine is the particulate inhalation exposure and health reconstruction investigative team. Monmouth University and its Division of Psychology in conjunction with the New York Academy of Medicine has become the mental health evaluation collaborator for LHF. These new affiliate institutions join the initial affiliates including the University of Texas in Galveston, the University of Arizona, and Mount Sinai Medical School (NYC) Division of Cardiology as members of the LHF consortium.

Recently, on May 2, 2003, a public meeting was sponsored, in New York City, by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The purpose of this meeting was to provide input to NIOSH in identifying the needs and priorities for providing long-term medical monitoring to emergency services, rescue, and recovery personnel who responded to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks at the WTC. Public Law 108-7, makes available $90 million to administer baseline and follow-up screening, clinical examination, long-term health monitoring, and analysis for these emergency services, rescue, and recovery personnel, of which $25 million is designated specifically for New York City firefighters.

At the current time, federally funded programs related to the long-term evaluation of health effects related to 9/11 include the Medical Department of the New York City Firefighters and the Mount Sinai Medical Center, Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, the directing group for the World Trade Center Worker and Volunteer Medical Screening Program. In addition, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), a federal public health agency, have created a registry of people who were exposed to the smoke, dust, and debris around the World Trade Center disaster and the subsequent cleanup of the disaster site. Another federal funding source related to 9/11 has been the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) of the National Institutes of Health who has supported smaller research studies related to exposure assessment, epidemiology, and outreach.

The LHF and the Penn State Medical School have presented the early post 9/11 health findings in a preliminary randomized cohort of 600 New York Police Officers officers. This presentation was made at NIOSH headquarters in Morgantown, West Virginia in April 2003. In addition, preliminary discussions are ongoing between the LHF consortium and physician members of the Mount Sinai Medical Center concerning collaboration of the voluntary follow-up screening in New York City involving the men and women officers originally screened at ground zero.