2024 Westchester Magazine Healthcare Hero

May 2024 

ELIZABETH SETON CHILDREN’S RESIDENT AND INTERNATIONAL SPOKESPERSON STEPHANIE GABAUD NAMED A 2024 HEALTHCARE HERO BY WESTCHESTER MAGAZINE

Elizabeth Seton Children’s resident and international spokesperson, Stephanie Gabaud, was named a 2024 Healthcare Hero by Westchester Magazine!

Stephanie Gabaud, 26, has lived most of her life at Elizabeth Seton Children’s Center, a specialty long-term pediatric care center, because of challenges such as spina bifida and Arnold-Chiari malformation.

She’s since become the face of the aging-out crisis threatening lives like hers, raising awareness about the fast-growing, life-and-death crisis for young adults with medically complex conditions who no longer qualify for pediatric care at 21 years old.

“I speak for them, and I am their advocate. We really want these children to thrive,” Gabaud says about the 169 children and young adults, only 15 of whom can communicate verbally. Gabaud lobbied in Albany for a young-adult center with 96 beds. She shares suggestions about facility-wide programming and liaises with donors and community partners on tours. And this fall in White Plains, construction is slated to begin on the first-of-its-kind forever home for people 18 and older with severe and chronic medical conditions.

In attendance to celebrate Stephanie at the Healthcare Heroes event were Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, Assemblymember Mary Jane Shimsky and Mayor of Yonkers Mike Spano, along with her family and many of her colleagues from the Elizabeth Seton Children’s team.