About Risa Gold MD and Miracle of Help:
Risa Gold MD, DLFAPA is a board-certified Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist in Cold Spring Harbor, NY. She graduated Cum Laude from Harvard, and earned her medical degree from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Gold completed a residency in Psychiatry at Payne Whitney Clinic, New York Hospital, Cornell and a Fellowship in Child Adolescence Psychiatry at North Shore University Hospital. After serving as the President of the Greater Long Island Psychiatric Society, Dr. Gold was awarded Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Gold has been in private practice since 1987. After her son returned from a medical service outreach trip in Sierra Leone, he alerted her to the pressing need for health care services in these remote and vulnerable villages. Dr. Gold started MOH USA, Inc to raise funds for a community-led project that would comprise a hospital complex and several small businesses to support it. She is married to Dr. Kenneth Gold & has raised four children.
Miracle of Help is a 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit using a community-led development model to help communities mobilize and design solutions that address their overall social and healthcare needs. Sierra Leone has the second highest infant mortality rate in the world. Inspired by firsthand accounts of the poverty and lack of medical services for pregnant women in eastern Sierra Leone, Miracle of Help (MOH) is helping the community build a Maternal Child Health Post (MCHP), for safe childbirth and pre- and post-natal care. The center is located in the village of Ngolahun, a village of slightly over 2,000 people, with no electricity or running water. Four smaller villages within walking distance (total population 2,000) will also receive services from the MCHP.
During our monthly pop-up clinics our doctors have diagnosed some form of malnutrition in 80% of the children they see (see photos). As of the end of May 2022, we established two malnutrition clinics for severe and moderate acute malnutrition for children under the age of five. Our staff was trained by clinicians from Project Peanut Butter & Partners in Health, and both clinics have been certified by the Sierra Leone government. Since the inception of the clinics, twenty-five children have been rescued from malnutrition and their mothers given jobs selling soap to support them. Currently, twenty-seven children are enrolled in the two clinics. The mothers learn how to make Bennimix (provided by MOH), a blend of nutritive food substances to feed their children.
Miracle of Help’s fundraising efforts to establish a safe birthing center / women’s health clinic in Sierra Leone were recognized by Ambassador Dr. Francis Kaikai at the Consulate of Sierra Leone in NY city, December 3, 2018. Ambassador Dr. Francis Kaikai appears in the center of this photo along with the Board of Directors of Miracle of Help.
