Legal Assistance of Western New York

In a state as large as New York, a steady stream of smart, innovative work is coming from NYHealth grantees and non-grantees alike that is relevant to NYHealth’s priority areas of Building Healthy Communities and Empowering Health Care Consumers and its focus area on Veterans’ Health. These organizations should be elevating their work and informing key stakeholders at regional, statewide, and national conferences, meetings, and other convenings. Yet, because of a lack of resources, they are often unable to do so. To address this issue, NYHealth is awarding grants through its Sponsoring Conference Participation in Support of Healthy Communities, Consumer Empowerment, and Veterans’ Health Request for Proposals (RFP). Through this RFP, NYHealth is sponsoring low-resource organizations to attend and present at local, State, and national conferences related to these areas. In 2018, NYHealth awarded Legal Assistance of Western New York (LawNY) a grant to participate in this initiative as part of its efforts to support veterans’ health.

Under this grant, LawNY sent staff members to the Student Veterans of America Conference, a gathering of more than 2,000 student veterans and their advocates to discuss issues for veterans in higher education. The conference aimed to ensure that as veterans complete their higher education and further their careers, they continue to receive care for their physical and mental health needs. This relates to LawNY’s work to ensure that veterans have the best health care available by helping patients with legal issues related to health care. By attending this conference, LawNY connected with veterans at a transitional point in their lives and provided them with information on how best to maintain their health care coverage. LawNY also had the opportunity to learn more about the needs of this demographic of veterans to inform its future work.

View a complete list of conference participation grantees.