Good Housekeeping and GE Healthcare Partner to Present Third Annual Heroes for Health Awards.

NEW YORK -- NBC News' Campbell Brown Co-Hosts Awards Ceremony at the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse on November 17th

Good Housekeeping magazine and GE Healthcare join together to announce the third annual Heroes for Health Awards, which honor incredible women who have made other people's health their top priority. This year's winners are five women with inspiring stories from around the world who have made a difference in the lives of others, including the first woman commander of the U.S. military's largest overseas hospital, a mother who lost two young sons to a rare heart disorder and an Ethiopian woman who started an orphanage for children who lost their parents to AIDS.

The 2004 Heroes for Health recipients will be featured in the December issue of Good Housekeeping and honored at a luncheon on Wednesday, November 17 at the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse (10th Floor of the Rose Building in the Lincoln Center) in New York. NBC's Weekend Today Anchor Campbell Brown will host the luncheon ceremony. GE will donate $10,000 to the respective causes of each recipient.

"For the third year in a row, we are just amazed at the way our Heroes for Health have bravely worked to improve the lives of others," says Ellen Levine, editor-in-chief of Good Housekeeping. "This year's recipients are an inspiration to our readers and we are proud to be able to share their remarkable stories."

This year's recipients are:

Col. Rhonda Cornum: Colonel Cornum, 50, is the first woman commander of the U.S. military's largest overseas hospital, Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. She supervises 1,853 hospital staffers who treat soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as American military personnel stationed in the medical center's region and their families. During the first Gulf War, Col. Cornum, then a Flight Surgeon, suffered severe injuries when her helicopter was shot down. She was captured by the Iraqis and held for eight days, during which time she was sexually molested. Col. Cornum earned the Purple Heart.

Lisa Yue: After the death of her two young sons to a rare heart disorder called cardiomyopathy, Lisa Yue, 39, created the Children's Cardiomyopathy Foundation to spread awareness of the disease. The foundation has sponsored a $43,000 study into the genetic causes of cardiomyopathy, established a tissue and blood bank for researchers, and donated $100,000 to the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of New York-Presbyterian to establish a pediatric cardiomyopathy program. Yue, of Tenafly, N.J., has become a powerful one-woman advocate for the cause, testifying before Congress in order to win more federal funding. Happily, she and her husband, Eddie Yu, are now the proud parents of two young children - one adopted, and one biological (who have exhibited no signs of the illness).

Mary Buschell: Mary Buschell, 55, a pediatric respiratory therapist at the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital in Ann Arbor, witnesses devastating cases in the pediatric ICU every day. In 1986, Buschell started a support group for parents of children on portable ventilators, as a result of pulmonary disease, spinal cord injuries and degenerative disorders. She soon realized how badly they needed a break, and, urged on by a parent, in 1990 created Trail's Edge, a summer camp for these children. The weeklong program provides special activities the children never imagined they'd be able to do--from riding motorcycles to piloting a plane--and just this past summer, the building of a specially-designed tree house.

Aubrie Maze: At age 16, Aubrie Maze was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, a form of bone cancer. Cancer treatment turned Aubrie's world upside down, and the emotional fallout was especially tough. To help other teens get through their battle with cancer, Maze, now 20, wrote and hand-produced Cutting Up: Laughing & Crafting - Ideas that Helped One Teenager Through Cancer Treatment. Equal parts scrapbook, memoir, how-to-guide, and medical primer, the book also has blank pages for teenagers to chart their own thoughts and feelings. For the past three years, Maze's cancer has been in remission. Now she and her mother are looking for sponsors to help distribute the book free of charge to kids undergoing treatment. Aubrie's goal is to send stacks of them to cancer units in hospitals around the world. A sophomore at Santa Rosa Junior College in California, Maze undergoes scans every six months to make sure the cancer hasn't returned.

Haregewoin Teferra: More than a million children in Ethiopia have been orphaned by AIDS. Grief stricken after the loss of her own 24-year-old daughter, Haregewoin Teferra decided to take action to help her people. Soon after opening her Addis Ababa home to care for orphaned children, she ran out of space. Teferra decided to start a school; if she could shelter and feed the children during the day, maybe their extended families would be able to keep them at home longer. The immediate success of the school inspired another idea: to open a workshop where AIDS-afflicted men and women could work as many days or hours a week as their health permitted. Today, 28 orphans live with Teferra, 75 attend her school, and 80 men and women are employed in her workshop.

"We are pleased to participate in a program that recognizes the outstanding achievements and noble qualities of people who care about humanity and improving health" said Joe Hogan, President and CEO of GE Healthcare Technologies. "These women are true champions who have made a profound impact through inspiring and helping others."

The December issue of Good Housekeeping will be available on newsstands nationwide November 9th.

Good Housekeeping, founded 119 years ago, reaches 24 million readers every month. The Good Housekeeping Institute, founded in 1900, is the consumer product testing facility that researches products appearing in the magazine's articles and advertisements. Good Housekeeping is published by Hearst Magazines, a unit of The Hearst Corporation (www.hearst.com) and one of the world's largest publishers of monthly magazines, with a total of 18 U.S. titles and 138 international editions. Hearst's magazines are read by more U.S. adult women than any other monthly magazine publisher. The company also publishes 18 magazines in the United Kingdom through its wholly owned subsidiary, The National Magazine Company Limited.

GE (NYSE: GE) is a diversified technology and services company dedicated to creating products that make life better. The company's GE Healthcare division provides transformational medical technologies that will shape a new age of patient care. GE Healthcare's expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, disease research, drug discovery and biopharmaceuticals is dedicated to detecting disease earlier and tailoring treatment for individual patients. GE Healthcare offers a broad range of services to improve productivity in healthcare and enable healthcare providers to better diagnose, treat and manage patients with conditions such as cancer, Alzheimer's and cardiovascular diseases.

GE Healthcare is a $14 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 42,500 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information, visit gehealthcare.com