Queens Library Foundation, Inc.

The Rockaway Peninsula is a community of 116,000 that is considered the poorest in Queens, with more than 7,700 households living in poverty.

Residents are also in isolation, with two toll bridges and a narrow roadway to Nassau County as their only connection to the mainland. The neighborhood has been designated a primary care shortage area, one out of four residents is uninsured or went without insurance for the past year, and access to health care is even further limited by the recent closing of three local hospitals: Parkway, St. John’s, and Mary Immaculate. This project allowed Queens Library to develop a consistent, coordinated, large-scale health education and referral program throughout its local library network where those with the most health risks frequently come for free, reliable, culturally tailored information.

Through partnerships with Joseph P. Addabbo Community Health Center and Peninsula Hospital, Queens Library provided thousands of Rockaways and southeastern Queens residents with access to health education programs and provided direct links to referrals and quality follow-up care. Health access coordinators and health care providers followed up with patients who did not attend their appointments, helped reschedule them, and determined the cause of the missed appointments. In partnership with Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Queens Library also analyzed the reach of the program and determined the events and venues most useful in promoting connections to primary care by examining who gets connected, who falls through the cracks, and how to increase the number of people receiving regular primary care.