Genesee Valley Health Partnership, Inc.

To help foster statewide implementation of prevention activities, the New York State Department of Health issued the Prevention Agenda 2013–17 to address disease prevention and reduce health disparities.

All 58 local health departments were required to submit a Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) to the State outlining their strategies to advance the Prevention Agenda. To help energize the implementation of these CHIPs, the New York Health Foundation (NYHealth) awarded grants to health departments with the most innovative and feasible projects to improve the health and wellbeing of their communities through the Advancing New York State’s Prevention Agenda: A Matching Funds Program to Implement Community Health Improvement Plans initiative. The Prevention Agenda offered NYHealth a timely opportunity to build upon its work in diabetes prevention by helping support initiatives that tackled the root causes of diabetes and other chronic conditions, such as obesity and smoking. NYHealth awarded the Genesee Valley Health Partnership (GVHP) a grant to participate in this initiative.

GVHP used funds to focus on the Prevention Agenda priority area of preventing chronic disease. It worked to improve breast-feeding rates for women in Livingston County, with a particular emphasis on low-income working mothers. GVHP targeted physicians and practices to encourage their patients to breast-feed; get three additional certified lactation consultants trained to support women in their efforts to breast-feed; and collaborate with employers on the business case for providing breast-feeding supports to employees and help them to modify their worksites to make them more breast-feeding friendly.

See a full list of recipients.