S2AY Rural Health Network 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 tackle the root causes of diabetes and other chronic conditions, such as obesity and smoking. NYHealth awarded S2AY Rural Health Network, Inc. (S2AY) a grant to participate in this initiative.

S2AY used funds to help Schuyler, Seneca, Steuben, Ontario, Wayne, and Yates county health departments focus on the Prevention Agenda priority area of preventing chronic disease. S2AY collaborated with the health departments on forming two regionwide coalitions in the Finger Lakes to address hypertension and breast-feeding. For hypertension, it worked with providers to identify patients with hypertension and enrolled them in the registry and provided enhanced follow-up with patients to ensure they were taking their medications and monitoring their blood pressure. S2AY also worked with hospitals, Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and other partners to increase the number of mothers who were breast-feeding after hospital discharge and six months later. S2AY secured matching grant funds for this project from Greater Rochester Health Foundation and Finger Lakes Health Systems Agency.

See a full list of award recipients from this initiative.