Spotlighting Women Making a Difference in Health Care: Dr. Kathy Reilly Fallon CNR SAS ’90
In celebration of Women’s History Month, Mercy College is recognizing accomplished women making a difference in health care.
After 9/11, Dr. Kathy Reilly Fallon CNR SAS ’90 volunteered at Ground Zero for several months. A board-certified physician specializing in foot and ankle care and wound care, she spent three to four days per week in the makeshift clinic at St. Paul’s Chapel. As rescue and recovery workers took breaks from their grueling shifts, they visited the chapel for medical care, massages, counseling and many other services. Fallon treated foot and ankle injuries, which were usually blisters or Achilles tendonitis. Workers’ boots often half-melted in the ash, so she distributed new socks and measured their feet for new boots.
“I was just so happy that I was able to volunteer and give back to my country,” she said. “That time is etched in my heart forever. The sense of camaraderie was incredible, and I'll never forget that feeling. I'm grateful in a way that I had the opportunity to grow from that experience, and I truly believe that it made me a better person.”
Fallon’s time at the College of New Rochelle shaped how she thinks about service: “I draw upon my experience at the College every single day. As I think back to what we were taught about the College’s motto Serviam—that we are here on this earth to help and serve—I've always taken that to heart. This message is so deeply important to my mind and soul, and I really carry it with me. Every single day, I do my best to improve the lives of others.”
Even after months of volunteering at Ground Zero, Fallon did not feel like she had done enough. She decided to use her musical gifts to record “Heavenly Lullabies,” a CD of lullabies dedicated to the 63 unborn babies and almost one thousand children who had lost a parent in 9/11. She donated all the proceeds and hundreds of CDs to the Twin Towers Orphan Fund.
It turned out that Fallon never feels like she has done enough, so the CD was the first project of many. After starting the Heavenly Productions Foundation, she created “Heavenly Skies & Lullabies”—an illustrated song book and CD—and raised funds for World Vision to help the children affected by Hurricane Katrina. With her son James, she launched an annual backpack and school supply project, which has donated over 13,500 backpacks filled with school supplies to places as close to home as Yonkers and the South Bronx and as far away as Rwanda and Jamaica. She has also led all kinds of initiatives at the Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital in Westchester, including donating hand-stuffed teddy bears, organizing holiday concerts and toy drives and setting up art therapy projects for children receiving medical care.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Fallon saw her colleagues feeling overwhelmed, so she launched a morale-boosting campaign— sponsoring luncheons for staff, putting together special gift bags themed “hope bags for heroes,” distributing snacks and medical-themed rubber ducks and writing letters to health care company GoodRx to request snack donations. “It's so important to lift people's lives up, even in such small ways,” she said. “And I definitely learned that from the College of New Rochelle.”
A physician and surgeon at the Midtown Health Center in New York City, Fallon sees patients for a variety of foot and ankle conditions, including fractures, lacerations, strains, neuromas, infections and complications of diabetes. Lately, she has seen more stress fractures and Achilles tendonitis than usual, which confused her until she connected these to the COVID-19 pandemic. She believes that people are developing stress fractures when they start exercising again without easing into that increased activity level and Achilles tendonitis when they begin commuting by car again in stop-and-go traffic for the first time in years. “The pandemic has affected our bodies in so many more ways than you might expect,” she explained.
A busy schedule as a health care provider does not deter her unrelenting drive to give. Even after making a generous donation to support Ukraine last week, she and her foundation’s board members are currently organizing to hand-stuff teddy bears for the pediatric cancer patients at Ohmatdit—the largest children’s hospital in Ukraine—and donate funds directly to the hospital.
“When you do good, it comes back to you in unexpected ways, and it moves you in such an emotional way that your heart is never the same,” Fallon explained. “My hope is to always do great things with love.”