You Gotta Have Heart

Just six weeks after graduating from the physician assistant studies (PA) program, Rob Brown Jr. (B.S. ’02) responded to the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers.

“I was home watching everything on TV,” says Brown. “I had been an active firefighter for five years but realized I could help more in a medical capacity rather than putting out fires. So I went to the firehouse with all my medical equipment.”

After seeing the massive loss of life during the attacks, Brown, who retired as a lieutenant with the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) in 2021, says he just couldn’t stay at his job assisting a private practice doctor with plastic surgeries.

Instead, he wanted to focus on the health of first responders, particularly firefighters. This decision inspired him to establish the New York Firefighters Heart and Lung Institute, a private practice exclusively for firefighters in the United States, in 2002. The medical center offers numerous preventive screenings, such as exercise stress tests, echocardiograms, various ultrasounds, and pulmonary function tests. He also became the founder and president of the New York Firefighters Heart Foundation, which provides education and advanced medical screenings to help reduce line-of-duty deaths in the fire service across the nation and the world.

“The FDNY saw an 80 percent decrease in heart disease among firefighters after starting our program,” says Brown, who has hired three physicians at the institute—a cardiologist, a pulmonologist, and a dermatologist. “Since our inception, we have performed open-heart surgeries or placed stents for more than 350 firefighters.”

Brown says New York Tech Assistant Professor Frank Acevedo, M.S., was a huge influence on him during his time as a student. “He encouraged me to work hard and focus on things that were important. He was one of those people who really helped define what it meant to do that.”

As a result of Acevedo’s support and Brown’s family’s joy in giving, generosity has always been a priority for Brown, who recently became a donor to New York Institute of Technology’s PA program. Earlier this year, every student beginning their clinical year received an engraved stethoscope, and Brown plans to continue the program for as long as he can afford it.

“I never thought I’d have more than a thousand dollars to give away,” says Brown, whose self-funded foundation donates more than $150,000 annually to support the families of terminally ill and fallen firefighters. “I hope New York Tech students will give when they become alumni so they can pay it forward. There’s a responsibility for people to donate money to good causes when they’re able—that’s what makes the world go ’round.”