Progress Areas

Enhancing Impact

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Goal

Leverage our resources to increase impact

Progress

  • Leveraged more than $62 million from public and private sources, including direct co-funding and money raised.

What this means

Leveraging is a strategy across all program areas. Since 2009, more than $770 million has been leveraged.

Leveraging has allowed us to support, sustain, and expand efforts across the State.

Enhancing Impact

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Goal

Deploy activist model to achieve broad policy impact

Progress

  • The New York State Division of Veterans’ Services was elevated to full Department status with an enhanced role. NYHealth motivated this change with invited testimony and a previously commissioned Blueprint.
  • NYHealth grantees played key roles in educating policymakers and advocating for policy changes to improve care and protect patients. They contributed to important policy wins, including:
    • Enactment of consumer protections from medical debt, including banning hospitals from garnishing patient wages or placing liens on their homes to collect debt and requiring them to provide advance notice to patients when they charge facility fees.
    • Passage by the Legislature of a primary care investment bill to make recommendations to rebalance primary care spending in New York State. The bill was vetoed by the Governor.

NYHealth testified to New York State and City legislators on various issues:

What this means

We are a changemaker as well as a grantmaker. Using our reputational and human capital enhances our impact beyond funding.

Meaningful policy change takes time. NYHealth worked with grantees and policymakers to make important strides in a number of areas. More work is needed to get some of these policies over the finish line.

NYHealth continues our commitment to advocacy by providing expert testimony to decisionmakers. Actively using our voice informs and influences policy.

Enhancing Impact

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Goal

Advance racial health equity in our external and internal practices

Progress

  • A staff-led committee selected Race Forward to facilitate a yearlong racial equity coaching and consulting engagement. Resulting actions will be implemented in 2023.
  • Added race-explicit language to NYHealth communications to emphasize commitment to improving the health of people of color.
  • Organizations selected as part of the “Patients as Partners: Advancing Equity” program, a $1 million grantmaking initiative, undertook projects to more meaningfully engage patients of color as partners in their care.
  • Authorized an equity-focused RFP in the Healthy Food, Healthy Lives program to be released in 2023.
  • A survey of NYHealth grantees, conducted by the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP), showed generally similar results on measures related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) compared with peer foundations.

What this means

NYHealth is committed to advancing racial health equity and making meaningful changes to internal and external practices. Having an external consultant helps ensure an expert lens guides the process and bolsters accountability.

NYHealth continues to embed equity-focused opportunities in grant programs. Across programs, we will be more explicit and intentional about racial health equity.

This was the first time CEP asked questions related to DEI, signaling that these issues have taken on greater prominence in philanthropy. We strive to be above average in this domain.

Policy and Research

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Goal

Conceive and generate original research informing New York health policy issues

Progress

  • Published a first-of-its kind Food and Health Survey documenting the lived experiences of food-insecure New Yorkers. The report details the results of a 1,507-person statewide survey. The results are clear: food insecurity is strongly associated with worse health.
  • Published analysis of trends in veteran suicide in New York State.
  • This was a rebuilding year for internal Policy & Research capacity. New staff and capabilities will further increase the generation of actionable analyses.

What this means

This was the first time NYHealth directly conceived and conducted primary data collection and research. Public policy, and our work, should be informed by evidence and by the voices of those most affected.

The Food and Health Survey, veteran suicide data, and other analyses are informing advocates, the media, service providers, and the public. They are affecting policymaking, as well as future NYHealth grants.

With a robust internal capacity for policy and research, our hand as a changemaker is strengthened.

Promoting Healthy Food and Healthy Lives

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Goal

Support food systems planning and capacity-building

Progress

  • Eight regional/local planning groups are developing food systems plans with expert capacity-building support. These groups have:
    • Launched a community-wide food use audit to identify gaps in food access and inform policies and programs.
    • Transitioned from volunteer efforts to professionally staffed and structured ones.
    • Shared best practices and lessons learned across groups.

What this means

Different regions and communities have different needs and abilities. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, plans must be tailored to local realities.

Expert support accelerates planning and integrates diverse efforts into a coordinated body of work that enables alignment of policies. Regional and local plans can ultimately drive an effective food systems plan for all of New York State.

Promoting Healthy Food and Healthy Lives

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Goal

Maximize nutrition benefits programs

Progress

  • Field & Fork Network secured a $2 million annual appropriation from the State to expand the Double Up Food Bucks program and leveraged an additional $2 million in federal funding. The program is now operating in 32 counties and serving 42,000 SNAP recipients. At the close of 2022, the program surpassed $1 million in healthy food sales for the first time in New York State.
  • AdkAction and Hub on the Hill established the first food hub in the nation to accept SNAP payments online. They join a list of just 30 SNAP online vendors in New York State, a group almost exclusively composed of large businesses.

What this means

State and federal funding will go directly to New York State farmers and local economies. With rapid growth, however, come challenges in hiring new staff and implementing tracking and evaluation efforts.

Many SNAP users are homebound, lack transportation, or live in places without easy access to grocery stores. Online ordering and home delivery are promising solutions for rural food access.

Promoting Healthy Food and Healthy Lives

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Goal

Support healthier, culturally-responsive food in public institutions

Progress

What this means

Stakeholder-informed policy has the potential to enable institutions and municipalities to use their vast purchasing power to provide healthier meals to millions of New Yorkers and create additional opportunities for smaller farmers and suppliers to compete for institutional contracts. Even when the benefits of a policy seem obvious, change is hard and can take a long time.

Promoting Healthy Food and Healthy Lives

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Goal

Promote Food Is Medicine interventions

Progress

  • Established a statewide Food Is Medicine coalition with steering committee members that include New York health plans and the New York State Department of Health. The coalition is working to ensure food access is a priority in New York’s pending Medicaid waiver and has responded to State and federal governments’ requests for public comment.
  • Supported Health + Hospitals’ pediatric produce prescription study, the first of its kind nationally. Within six months of the study’s launch, 70% of the families had enrolled in the study. Informal feedback indicates increased produce consumption for the participating families.

What this means

Evidence shows that Food Is Medicine interventions improve health outcomes and generate cost savings. Little research has been conducted on pediatric Food Is Medicine programs; NYHealth aims to highlight successful projects and make the case for health systems to support more pediatric Food Is Medicine interventions.

Empowering Health Care Consumers

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Ensure greater transparency of and access to price, quality, and patient experience information

Progress

  • A cohort of 16 hospitals is receiving funding, technical assistance, and peer-learning opportunities to implement and expand open notes to make doctors’ visit notes accessible and actionable for patients, with potential to reach up to 5 million patients.
  • Manatt Health released a report examining initial implementation of new federal price transparency rules by New York State hospitals. In the first six months of implementation of the rule, many hospitals had not fully implemented the requirements.

What this means

New York State has gone from among the worst in the nation to among the best in OpenNotes adoption over the last decade. NYHealth’s current work with hospital systems is driving improvement, but primary care providers and other non-hospital systems also need support. As a link to our emerging 2023 program area focused on primary care, NYHealth invited non-hospital systems throughout the State to apply for funding and technical assistance to implement open notes.

Despite groundbreaking regulations, hospitals have not fully implemented price transparency requirements. Beyond meeting the letter of the law, hospitals must embrace the spirit of the law to help consumers understand what their health care will cost them.

Empowering Health Care Consumers

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Goal

Ensure that patients are partners in the clinical care delivery experience

Progress

  • NYHealth grantees led initiatives to expand equitable access to telehealth at public hospital sites, community health centers, and home– and community-based settings.
  • Healthcare Association of New York State (HANYS) helped 44 health facilities become designated as Age-Friendly Health Systems in 2022, with 85 facilities recognized as Age-Friendly in the program’s first two years.
  • The Center for Health Care Strategies assisted seven New York-based health care organizations in piloting strategies for engaging patients of color to advance health equity. Lessons from their experiences can be applied to better understand patients’ experiences, inform care delivery decisions, and address long-standing health disparities, including building trust with patient partners over time; tailoring outreach strategies; using trauma-informed approaches; collecting and using data in partnership with patients; and approaching patient engagement with humility and patience.

What this means

Telehealth became a popular model of health care delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic, but additional investment is required to ensure it is equitably accessible for people of color, people with low income, those who speak a primary language other than English, older adults, and rural residents. These telehealth models offer replicable strategies to support remote health care access for marginalized patients with complex health needs.

Patient navigation, engagement, and communication strategies help patients and caregivers navigate complex systems to access needed care. Age-Friendly Health Systems helped lay the groundwork for coordinated, statewide initiatives through the newly announced Master Plan on Aging to promote older adults’ health, independence, and dignity.

Patients of color are often marginalized, rather than placed at the center of their care. New tools and models of care can help ensure that the priorities, preferences, and experiences of patients of color shape their care. Health systems must undertake culture change to enable patients to have a meaningful voice.

Empowering Health Care Consumers

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Goal

Ensure that patients are partners in informing care delivery and health policies

Progress

What this means

In the wind-down of NYHealth’s Empowering Health Care Consumers priority area, NYHealth grantees have created a strong and lasting consumer advocacy infrastructure. Consumer advocates will continue to drive needed improvements in health care access, equity, quality, and costs in New York State.

Improving Veterans’ Health

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Goal

Increase visibility of veterans’ health issues

Progress

What this means

Beyond grantmaking, the Foundation uses our human capital and expertise to leverage and advance New York State’s collective work on veterans’ health.

Improving Veterans’ Health

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Goal

Increase access to comprehensive community-based services for veterans and their families

Progress

  • Increased access to best-in-class services aimed at preventing veteran suicide and improving the mental health of former service members by partnering with Stop Soldier Suicide, Veterans One-stop Center of WNY, and the Military Family Center at NYU Langone. These programs provide crisis intervention and mental health services while increasing access and inclusivity for high-risk veteran populations including women, people of color, members of the LGBTQIA community, and those residing in rural areas.
  • Leveraged State and federal funding to expand peer mentorship programs that reduce social isolation among veterans in Western New York, downstate, and Greater Rochester area. NYHealth also partnered with Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families to identify and share best practices for these programs.

What this means

Recent VA data reveal that suicide rates for veterans in New York remain stubbornly high despite federal, State, and local investment and attention.

NYHealth takes a public health approach to veteran suicide prevention, focusing on (1) peer mentoring to address the social isolation that may be associated with higher risk of suicide and (2) community-based services aimed at helping veterans in crisis.

Strategic partnerships and community collaboration remain key to our successful work in this area.

Special Projects Fund

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Goal

Supporting new endeavors and organizations

Progress

  • Conducted two Special Projects Fund grant cycles. NYHealth received a total of 363 letters of inquiry, with more than 70% of letters having a statewide, multiple county, or an upstate regional impact. Nearly half were from new applicants not previously funded by NYHealth.
  • Addressed a variety of topics, including an innovative home health aide model for providing methadone maintenance and wraparound services, a school-based vaping prevention program in New York City public schools, and expanding in-home medical care in Central New York using emergency medical services personnel.

What this means

The Special Projects Fund supports responsive opportunities with the potential to create long-lasting, positive improvements to public health systems and health care delivery.

Special Projects Fund

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Goal

Being responsive to emerging trends

Progress

  • Built a $1.5 million funder consortium and partnered with New York State Department of Health and community-based organizations to lay the groundwork for the Keep New York Covered Initiative, which will complement the State’s efforts to ensure that nearly 9 million New Yorkers retain their health insurance coverage at the end of the federal public health emergency in 2023. Ichor Strategies developed a community-informed messaging campaign and analysis of the communities likely to lose coverage.
  • Worked to curb the opioid epidemic by supporting OnPoint NYC, which operates the first government-sanctioned Overdose Prevention Centers in the nation at its two intervention sites in East Harlem and Washington Heights. In their first year of operation, these sites have reversed more than 600 overdoses that could have been fatal.
  • Addressed urgent public health and mental health issues that emerged throughout the year, including support for a community-led response after the racist massacre at a Buffalo supermarket; services for Ukrainian New Yorkers affected by the war in Ukraine; and work to address a viral outbreak of monkeypox, the re-emergence of polio in New York State, and the chaotic arrival of migrants in New York City.

What this means

The Special Projects Fund program area complements NYHealth’s strategic grantmaking directed at specific priorities with funding that is responsive to time-sensitive and emerging issues.

Numerous public health crises emerged in New York in 2022. NYHealth responded nimbly, quickly, and flexibly to make grants to address time-sensitive needs throughout the State.

Communicating Effectively

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Goal

Increase the visibility, credibility, and influence of the Foundation and our grantees

Progress

Publishing

  • Published 9 reports and 12 commentaries, in addition to 8 grant outcome reports.
  • Published 5 op-eds and letters to the editor.

Traditional Media

  • Received 85 media hits.

Convening

  • Held 35 online convenings, including NYHealth’s inaugural Healthy Food, Healthy Lives conference, which featured a keynote by the Director of Nutrition Security and Health Equity at the United States Department of Agriculture.

E-mail/Social Media

  • Maintained more than 15,000 contacts on our e-mail lists.
    • Averaged a 29% open rate (industry standard is 38%) and a click rate of 6% (industry standard is 2%) for e-mail blasts.
  • More than 7,000 Twitter followers.

Website

  • Improved website accessibility to move toward compliance with global Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA.

What this means

A robust and proactive communications program is a fundamental part of the Foundation’s operating model. Communications shape the visibility, reputation, influence, and impact of the Foundation and the work supported through our grantmaking.

Although our media presence was high in 2022, it was lower than in past years. A revamped Policy & Research capacity and other effort should help reelevate media hits to higher levels.

Twitter has historically been our primary social media channel; given the changes to the platform in 2022, we are reassessing our strategy in this area and closely monitoring the landscape.

Ensuring that the Foundation’s website is accessible to users who use assistive devices to translate website content is an element of our commitment to equity and inclusion.

Investing and Operating Effectively

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Goal

Strong endowment/ investment performance

Progress

  • As of December 31, 2022, the 3-year compound annual return on endowment investments was 2.5%, net of fees.
  • NYHealth’s returns were hurt by sharp declines in both stock and bond markets during 2022, causing our absolute and relative performance to fall.
  • Investment performance relative to peers for the 3-year period ending September 30, 2022 (latest comparison available) ranked in the bottom quartile.1 Our returns since inception are above median.
  • Maintained return of 5.9% since inception (July 2006).
  • When compared with the benchmark of 5% plus CPI (Consumer Price Index) since inception, NYHealth was 1.4% below the benchmark.

1 Peer data are based on a survey conducted by Cambridge Associates; “Peers” are defined as foundations with less than $500 million in assets. There are currently 60 foundations contributing such data.

What this means

The value of our endowment in 2006 was $265 million. Since then, investment return has been above the median of peer group, allowing the Foundation to spend $251 million on grants and operations.

The Foundation is monitoring signs of continued volatility in investment markets.

Investing and Operating Effectively

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Goal

Strong internal management and customer service

Progress

  • NYHealth was certified with another clean audit.
  • The average rating by grantees of NYHealth staff members’ responsiveness was 6.51 (out of a 7-point scale), placing NYHealth highly relative to peer foundations.2
  • In 2022, all grantees received their initial payment within an average of 12 days of receiving an award notice.

2 Based on the 2022 Center for Effective Philanthropy Grantee Perception Survey.

What this means

Receiving a clean audit each year reflects our commitment to operational efficiency and transparency.

Our goal is to continue to improve upon our customer service to grantees. Providing timely funding is especially important for smaller organizations working on time-sensitive issues.