After helping raise $72 million, Tenenbaum retiring from Prisma hospital foundation

Samuel Tenenbaum, a Columbia philanthropist and social activist, is retiring from his latest post as president of the leading Prisma Health-Midlands.

From 2010 to 2020, Tenenbaum led a Midlands Foundation team in raising some $72 million in more than 118,500 donor gifts for the hospital system, Prisma said Thursday in a press release.

“We will forever be grateful to Samuel for immeasurable contributions to philanthropy in the Midlands over the past 12 years. He has been the driving force to raise awareness and funds for causes championed by our Foundation to benefit Prisma Health-Midlands,” said Reed Mattingly, chair, Prisma Health Midlands Foundation board of directors.

Tenenbaum, 77, and his wife of 37 years, Inez, 70, will be moving to the South Carolina mountains near the North Carolina line. Inez Tenenbaum is a former S.C. superintendent of education and also a former chair of the federal Consumer Products Safety Commission under President Obama. She’s also a Columbia lawyer and will continue working remotely from the mountains.

For nearly 50 years, Samuel Tenebaum has been involved in working for and raising money for numerous causes in the Columbia area and beyond, from helping resettle refugees from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to helping raise more than $500,000 to buy a fire truck for New York City Fire Department after 9/11.

“In times of crisis, when leadership was needed, the first person I called was Samuel Tenenbaum,” former Columbia Mayor Bob Coble, mayor for 20 years from 1990 to 2010 said Thursday. “We’ve blessed with his leadership.”

According to the hospital, the millions raised by Tenenbaum and his team have gone to such projects as:

▪ The Joyce Martin Hill Behavioral Health Center, which provides specialized emergency care to behavioral health patients.

▪ The Child Abuse Medical Assessment Program, which was established at Prisma Health Children’s Hospital-Midlands. The assessment program helps Child Abuse Pediatrics health care providers and other team members evaluate children sooner and helps remove them from dangerous abuse or neglect situations.

▪ A mobile medical simulation laboratory, which was funded for the Prisma Health-University of South Carolina School of Medicine Simulation Center. This is a fully equipped mobile teaching platform that gives doctors the ability to provide high-tech simulation-based training to health care providers across the state. It also has been used to support Prisma Health mobile COVID-19 vaccination sites in the Midlands.

▪ Nine 3D Digital Mammography units for Prisma Health Breast Center locations and the mobile mammography unit.

▪ A new, highly specialized critical care ambulance for the Prisma Health-Midlands Pediatric Transport team and Prisma Health Children’s Hospital-Midlands. The new ambulance transports critically premature and severely ill children within a 16-county region of the state.

▪ A 16-slice portable CT scanner, the only one in the state, for Prisma Health Richland Hospital. The scanner is used by the neuroscience team to care for stroke and brain injury patients.

Tenenbaum, known for his nonstop activity, said he has no plans besides retirement in North Carolina. “I know one thing — I’m not going to sit there and just do nothing.”

This story was originally published April 29, 2021 at 3:40 PM.