New York Academy of Medicine

To help achieve its goal of making New York the healthiest state, the New York State Department of Health issued the Prevention Agenda 2013–17 as a blueprint for State and local community action 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 energize the implementation of these plans, NYHealth launched a matching grants initiative and selected the health departments with the most innovative and feasible projects for grants awards to improve the health and wellbeing of their communities. To help advance the goals of the Prevention Agenda and support grantees of this initiative and other county health departments working toward implementing their prevention plans, NYHealth awarded the New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM) a grant to provide technical assistance and create learning communities.

Under this grant, NYAM developed a suite of activities to support the successful execution and launch of local CHIPs. Specifically, NYAM helped counties develop opportunities to strategically communicate goals and objectives to local stakeholders; create or strengthen working partnerships with hospitals and other community partners; and identify scalable program and policy efforts that have been proven to work. In addition, NYAM developed learning communities, which will use Web-based platforms to share resources and discuss solutions to common challenges. Lastly, NYAM identified model counties that are implementing population-level interventions and facilitated peer-led virtual learning opportunities.