The Health Foundation for Western and Central New York Board of Trustees has awarded new grants totaling more than $1.5 million in June 2018. The grant making activities reflect commitment to two of the Foundation’s focus areas, which include improving health outcomes for children birth to age five who are impacted by poverty and strengthening health capacity in the Western and Central New York regions.
Young Children Impacted by Poverty
Innovations in Children’s Health & Well-Being Small Grants: $376,500 to identify new and emerging practices that will have an immediate and direct impact on children aged five years and under living in communities affected by poverty. By providing grants of up to $25,000 to organizations in western and central New York, this process will provide an opportunity to learn about new and innovative approaches to improving health and well-being of children, while also allowing organizations to explore different ways of providing services or expand on what they are already doing in this area.
Cayuga Community Health Network Doula Program: $205,900 to develop a doula program to serve women who are pregnant and/or those who have recently given birth. In addition to providing training in the birth process, breastfeeding and general pregnancy information to individuals who want to become doulas, the agency will provide a venue for monthly learning communities and networking among doulas. Additionally, CCHN will encourage the development of business acumen and provide support to doulas who seek to operate a business on their own as individual consultants. This program will operate as a pilot to provide CCHN the opportunity to further develop the business case for sustaining a doula training program in Cayuga County and support for mothers in rural areas.
Erie County Department of Social Services – Child Protective Services Division, Community Health Worker Pilot: $100,000 to pilot a partnership between Child Protective Services case workers and immigrant/refugee community health workers to prevent and decrease the neglect, maltreatment and abuse of children within immigrant and refugee families. The funding will support training and delivery of per diem services by up to 15 culturally specific community health workers, 720 outreach events and navigation services for approximately 232 immigrant/refugee families. Additionally, the Child Protective Services Division will use the results as a basis to support a formal expansion of this approach within the system.
Community Health Capacity
Partnerships for Healthy Communities Phase 2: $605,000 to support “Health Across All Policies,” at the local level. In 2017 Governor Cuomo launched an initiative to advance HAAP which includes a pledge to make New York the first Age Friendly State and a goal of engaging state agencies in a collaborative approach to make health improvement a focus of policies and regulations of every agency. New York State will release a Request for Proposals to identify ten communities that will receive funding to advance the HAAP framework at the local level. One site will be selected in each of the ten economic zones in New York State.
The Foundation will accelerate uptake of HAAP in western and central New York by supplementing the State’s effort with an intensive learning collaborative and supplemental technical assistance provided by experienced HAAP implementers. The Foundation will sponsor three additional communities in the learning collaborative, each of which are communities that have made significant strides in establishing livable and Age-Friendly communities and will serve as “anchor members” of the learning collaborative.
Population Health Collaborative: $125,000 for planning and development of the “3-4-50” framework. The “3-4-50” framework is built on the observation that 3 behaviors (sedentary lifestyle, poor diet and smoking) heightens risk for 4 chronic conditions (heart disease, diabetes, COPD and cancer) that contributes to at least half of all deaths in a community. Under this model, a broad cross section of community members collectively create consistent language, develop shared metrics and best practices, and move communities in a healthier direction through increased coordination, heightened awareness and lifestyle change.
The Population Health Collaborative is leading the exploration, development and creation of the regional coalition that will use this evidence based model to address the prevalence and burden of chronic disease in the eight county region of Western New York.
StoryGrowing in Western and Central New York: Up to $71,750 to support a second cohort of the StoryGrowing program in western New York, and continuing education and professional development opportunities for non-profit organizations in central New York. StoryGrowing builds the capacity of organizations to effectively communicate to internal and external audiences and tell their story to advance their mission and goals. The nine-month program is supported in partnership with the John R. Oishei Foundation, the Gifford Foundation and Central New York Community Foundation.
Fellows Action Network: Up to $60,000 to develop the potential of the network, to identify a community-based organization to be the home of Fellows Action Network moving forward and to include administration of FAN programming and evaluation. The FAN was implemented to provide a “home” for graduates of the Health Foundation’s Health Leadership Fellows program, in which they can continue to network, participate in learning opportunities, skill development trainings and pursue community goals through advocacy, networking and mutual support.
