Steisand’s latest work isn’t musical,
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, hospital to Hollywood’s rich and glamorous, is adding another star to its own personal walk of fame.
Already home to the Sharon Osbourne Colon Cancer Program, the Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. Brain Tumor Center, and a cascading water sculpture named “George and Gracie” after George Burns and Gracie Allen, the Los Angeles-based medical center is adding the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center. It will be directed by cardiologist Dr. C. Noel Bairey Merz.
In addition to Streisand’s own $10 million contribution to the Women’s Heart Center, the entertainment icon is also lending her celebrity to help raise awareness of—as she puts it— the “unfair misconception that heart disease is mostly a man’s problem.”
She and husband James Brolin this month opened their home to their highpowered friends to raise money for research on women’s heart disease. Former President Bill Clinton was a special guest at the event.
Attendees paid as much as $100,000 per couple for quips from actor Martin Short and performances from Streisand and other singers. But the former Funny Girl was absolutely serious about asking her friends for further support to end gender inequality in cardiovascular disease.
It may sound like chutzpah, but who better to address Yentl syndrome than Yentl herself?