Common Ground Health

The global coronavirus has brought uncertainty and anxiety into people’s lives, workplaces, and neighborhoods, particularly for those who work to improve the health of our communities.

During this difficult time, many organizations across New York State are working tirelessly to keep people safe, especially the most vulnerable. In response, NYHealth is supporting statewide and local efforts to address emerging health care and public health needs in the wake of the pandemic. In 2020, NYHealth awarded Common Ground Health a grant to help implement a community-based health screening tool for tracking COVID-19 throughout the Finger Lakes region of New York State.

Under this grant, Common Ground Health helped implement ROC-COVID, an early identification screening tool first used in Rochester, throughout the Finger Lakes region. In collaboration with the University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester Regional Health System, and Monroe County, Common Ground Health expanded enrollment in this initiative to track symptoms among under-represented populations, including Black and Latinx communities, rural residents, and young adults. Through daily monitoring, analysts used the data to inform public health services, testing guidelines, and mitigation strategies for the virus. Common Ground Health also developed data dashboards and interactive heat-maps for other at-risk New Yorkers; these could be filtered by age, race/ethnicity, and gender and will display changes over time.

View a complete list of NYHealth COVID-19 Response and Relief Efforts grantees.