Community Health Action of Staten Island, Inc.

The one-year anniversary of the Hurricane Sandy disaster is a particularly vulnerable period for some disaster survivors.

This is a time when people who have suffered loss and trauma are most likely to experience trigger events, which can contribute to the emergence or re-emergence of conditions such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and alcohol and substance use. NYHealth awarded the Community Health Action of Staten Island (CHASI) a grant to help identify those people who may be developing serious mental health and/or substance use conditions and connect them to appropriate and timely health care and mental health services.

Under this grant, CHASI targeted impacted communities of Staten Island’s East Shore, with a focus on low-income and disenfranchised Hurricane Sandy survivors. CHASI deployed a mobile unit three days a week on a regular schedule to four neighborhoods where registered nurses will engage people in conversations about their health. It conducted individual assessments and screenings to identify health conditions and barriers to care. CHASI worked with patients to link them to needed care and services and conduct follow-up outreach. Support activities included crisis counseling, health education, telephone reminders, and advocacy services. Through this funding, CHASI engaged with and assessed 200 Staten Island residents, in addition to the more than 700 individuals it had provided services to prior to this project.