Listen to this articleLifebridge Health received a $10 million donation from Ellen WP Wasserman on Tuesday, the largest donation from an individual in the Baltimore-based health system’s 26-year history.
The donation will establish an endowment to fund scholarships for medical students training at Sinai Hospital’s Regional Medical Campus (RMC), a partnership with George Washington University’s School of Medicine & Health Sciences (GW SMHS).
This donation brings her total giving to LifeBridge Health to approximately $24 million, with her previous giving primarily benefiting children, including the endowment of the Ellen WP Wasserman Chair in Pediatrics at Herman & Walter Samuelson Children’s Hospital at Sinai.
Wasserman, who turned 101 in March, became a member emeritus of LifeBridge Health’s board of directors in 2022. She served on the board of Sinai Hospital for nearly 20 years and was a founding member of LifeBridge Health’s board of directors in 1998.
GW’s RMC students spend their third and fourth years of medical school in clinical rotations at Sinai Hospital of Baltimore, where they train and work in a community-based health care system. One goal of the RMC is to train the next generation of physicians who could one day practice in the Baltimore region.
During their training at Sinai, students help care for many patients who come from underserved communities where economic and social inequalities can negatively impact their health. The RMC focuses on primary care and community-based medicine.
The RMC program is now in its second full year, and 15 GW SMHS students are currently training at Sinai. When the program is at full capacity, there will be a total of 60 students (30 in the third year and 30 in the fourth year). The new GW SMHS class starting medical school this fall already has 30 freshmen who will come to RMC in Baltimore for their clinical rotations in April 2026. Through the foundation, these students will receive tuition scholarships of $10,000 per year and will be known as Wasserman Scholars.
During their time at Sinai, third-year students rotate through every medical specialty, from family medicine and internal medicine to pediatrics, psychiatry, obstetrics/gynecology, neurology, surgery, and more. They work alongside physicians, nurses, and other team members on hospital wards, in physician offices, and in the community. Fourth-year students can take electives offered only at RMC, such as population health, value-based care, and technology/digital health.
RMC students complete the first two years of medical school on the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences campus in Washington before coming to Baltimore for their final two years of medical school.
