Healthy Capital District Initiative

A key goal of NYHealth’s Empowering Health Care Consumers priority area is to ensure that people have the tools, resources, and support they need to make informed decisions about their health care.

As the only statewide health foundation in New York, NYHealth can play a leadership role in building the field of leaders and changemakers working across the State to empower health care consumers. For organizations already engaged in this work, attending conferences and other convenings provides an opportunity to share their successes and lessons learned. Conference attendance can also encourage new actors to enter the field and incorporate consumer empowerment into their work. Yet, because of a lack of resources, many are often unable to attend. Through its Sponsoring Conference Participation Related to Empowering Health Care Consumers Request for Proposals, NYHealth sponsored nonprofit or low-resourced organizations to attend or present at local, State, and national conferences related to empowering health care consumers. In 2017, NYHealth awarded Independence Care System (ICS) a grant to participate in this initiative.

With NYHealth funding, HCDI sent its public health data analyst to attend the 2017 Health Datapalooza in Washington, D.C. This year’s conference included sessions on consumer data and the consumer voice in health care. By attending this conference, HCDI was be able to inform its Consumer Health Network (CHN), a virtual workgroup that provides consumer perspectives to help shape population health activities and health care transformation processes, which included advising various programs run by the New York State Department of Health. HCDI also shared information learned from the conference with its members in the Capital Region.

View a complete list of conference participation grantees.