New York City Council Members Sandy Nurse and Jennifer Gutiérrez joined Wyckoff Heights Medical Center President and CEO Vali Gache and hospital leaders to announce a $2 million City Council investment to expand and upgrade the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit.
The capital funding, secured by City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams with Council Member Nurse in the city’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget, will support high-quality care for mothers and newborns while advancing the third phase of renovations to the medical center’s 11th-floor maternity and postpartum unit and 12th-floor labor and delivery unit.
Speaker Adams said the women-majority City Council has prioritized improving maternal health and addressing long-standing inequities facing families, noting that the FY26 allocation includes $2 million to modernize Wyckoff’s NICU and $5.8 million overall to transform a critical part of the hospital. She credited Council Members Nurse and Gutiérrez and the Wyckoff team for their work and emphasized the importance of sustaining safety-net hospitals that serve underserved communities while advancing efforts to reduce maternal mortality.
“Our historically diverse, women-majority City Council has consistently championed efforts to improve maternal health and confront the longstanding inequities facing our mothers and families,” said Speaker Adams.
The planned 5,000-square-foot NICU suite will accommodate 15 incubators and include three nursery rooms, one of them an isolation room, along with a breastfeeding room, family waiting areas, hallways, storage and utility rooms, a nurses’ station, offices and lounge space for clinical staff.
Between FY24 and FY25, Wyckoff Heights Medical Center received $3.8 million in capital funding from Speaker Adams and Nurse to support the first two phases of the transformation. With this year’s funding, the hospital will continue renovations on the 11th floor and modernize its newborn care facilities.
Council Member Nurse said she pushed for funding after learning of the need to revamp the maternity and neonatal suites, adding that $5.8 million has now been secured over the past two fiscal years, including $800,000 from her district allocations and $5 million through Speaker Adams’ citywide maternal health initiative. She described Wyckoff as a pillar of health access in Bushwick and said the investment is especially critical given persistent disparities in maternal health outcomes for Black and brown women.
Council Member Gutiérrez highlighted the role of north Brooklyn hospitals as essential community institutions, saying investments in infrastructure strengthen entire neighborhoods. She said modern maternity and neonatal units contribute to safer births, quicker emergency response, and peace of mind for families, and noted that the $5.8 million investment will provide parents, babies plus healthcare workers with safe, dignified and state-of-the-art spaces.
Gache said the announcement marks an important step in improving the care environment for newborns, mothers, and families across Brooklyn and Queens, as well as for Wyckoff’s staff. She said the new neonatal, maternity and labor and delivery suites will create a brighter, more efficient, plus patient-centered setting that supports excellent care, reflecting on her own experience delivering her children at a safety-net community hospital.
“Today marks a vital opportunity to improve the environment of care for some of the most celebrated and vulnerable members of our communities – newborns and their mothers, the children and families of Brooklyn and Queens and the incredibly hard-working teams of Wyckoff staff who accompany and care for them in this important chapter of their lives,” said Gache.
