Safe Health Educators hosts grand opening in Baldwin

Posted

Baldwin welcomed a new business earlier this month: Safe Health Educators.

A leading training provider to front-line health care workers, Safe Health Educators hosted a grand opening of their stand-alone training facility, located at 2400 Grand Ave., on Oct. 6.

Attendees included nursing staff from hospitals such as Mount Sinai South Nassau, Memorial Sloan Kettering and Northwell as well as elected officials — State Senator Todd Kaminsky, Assemblywoman Judy Griffin and Kevin Devlin, director of community outreach for U.S. Rep. Kathleen Rice — and Small Business Association Long Island Office Manger Robert Piechota.

There was a demonstration of hands-only CPR, which is applicable during this time of the coronavirus pandemic. Attendees also toured the facility and enjoyed refreshments.

Safe Health Educators is led by owner Richard Rattan and provides various training courses, including Advanced Cardiac Life Support, Pediatric Advanced Life Support for front-line health care workers needing to maintain their required certifications.

Rattan, who himself has extensive healthcare experience, started Safe Health Educators in 2006 out of his home and said he is proud to open the facility to meet the increasing need for training and education.

When Rattan was a young boy in Trinidad, he had a dream of becoming a firefighter, according to a news release. After he and his family emigrated to the United States in the 1970s, he served in the U.S. Air Force.

After leaving the military service, he became an Emergency Room nurse and volunteered in two local fire departments on Long Island. A few years later, as a fire captain for the United Nations, Rattan was charged with training new firefighters in Bosnia and Kososvo.

In 2006, while working full time as a paramedic for Northwell, he launched Safe Health Educators and within a year had moved the business out of his home.

Safe Health Educators had prepared to move into a free-standing 3,500-square foot training facility financed through a $640,000 SBA loan.

“Everybody thought I was crazy to leave my job and start this business because we were in a recession,” Rattan said in a statement. “But I was so busy that opening a dedicated training center just made sense. At that time I came to the SBDC and received great guidance.”

Advisor Troy Diaz helped him create financial projections that enabled Rattan to get his loan approval.

Safe Health’s services are geared primarily toward healthcare professionals who need to maintain their required certifications. As an American Heart Association-approved center, his offerings include Basic Cardiac Life Support, Advanced Cardiac Life Support, Pediatric Advanced Life Support and a host of other technical trainings.

Rattan also offers free infant CPR training to new mothers and grandparents on a regular basis. The new location effectively doubles the course offering capacity and will further position Safe Health Educators as a leader in the area’s healthcare training sector.

Over the past ten years, Safe Health Educators has grown and provided a variety of educational and consultative services to hospitals, fire departments, police departments and private industries.

Additionally, the NYS SBDC network named Rich Rattan and Safe Health Educators as their Veteran Entrepreneur of the Year for 2020.