Chief of Urology
NYC Health + Hospitals/Kings County

Devoted to Brooklyn’s Underserved

Dr. Andrew Winer spent five years at Downstate Medical Center, completing his residency in urology in 2014. Then he moved across the East River for a two-year fellowship in urologic oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He was struck, if unsurprised, by the differences between the two institutions—in the demography of their patients, the access to health care they offered, and the clinical outcomes.

Experiencing the disparity firsthand triggered a pivotal career decision: After his fellowship at MSK, Dr. Winer went back to Brooklyn to accept a position as chief of urology at NYC Health + Hospitals/Kings County and an academic appointment at Downstate. “I’m able to pursue my clinical interests treating urologic malignancies while also being able to study them in an underserved population that is typically underrepresented in published research,” he explains. Soon after his arrival, he was also appointed associate director of the urology residency program he had completed himself only three years earlier. His passion for teaching was quickly evident: He was named the program’s Teacher of the Year each of his first two years.

Dr. Winer’s aspirations started forming early in his life, modeled on his parents’ altruism, his grandmother’s career as a nurse, and physicians he had the opportunity to shadow starting in middle school. His commitment to working in the city’s public health system comes in part from feeling “a sense of freedom from the constraints that many private practitioners are subject to. I can simply provide the right care for the right patient, which was the ultimate reason I became a doctor.”

And every once in a while there comes a day in a doctor’s career when something truly exciting happens. For Dr. Winer, one “monumental moment that will forever stay with me” came a few months ago when he was part of the Kings County team that performed the first robotic procedure in the hospital’s history. “The sense of hospital pride was like no other,” he said.

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