Orleans, Genesee each awarded $30,500 grants for health initiatives
Press Release, Genesee and Orleans County Health Departments
Genesee and Orleans County Health Departments were recently notified each county would receive $30,500 in New York State Department of Health’s ongoing Local Health Department Performance Incentive Initiative.
This is the fourth year of the program which NYSDOH chose to focus on improving performance in chronic disease prevention for the fall 2016 to June 2017 timeframe.
Although chronic disease has surpassed communicable disease as the leading cause of death and disability in the United States, public health activities to prevent chronic disease may be less established for some local health departments.
The 2016 Performance Incentive initiative encouraged LHDs to strengthen those efforts and meet related standards established by the Public Health Accreditation Board. In addition to improving chronic disease prevention activities, this year’s Incentive Program exposed LHDs to the process of submitting documentation for full PHAB accreditation.
This incentive program is voluntary and 41 local health departments participated, completing the initiative by submitting all the required documentation during the performance period.
All participating counties received a $5,000 base award and a total of 20 LHDs received a base award and additional incentive award based on the scoring of their submission. The incentive awards ranged from $25,500 to $60,500 based on county population size. Of the 17 small counties that participated, eight were awarded the full incentive funding which included Genesee and Orleans counties.
“I am pleased with the efforts the staff in both counties put forth while participating in the Incentive Program and to be recognized by receiving the maximum award,” said Paul Pettit, director of Genesee and Orleans County Health Departments. “It also gave our staff an opportunity to see the process used to eventually apply for national accreditation in the future.
Pettit said the health departments in Genesee and Orleans are looking at options for spending the grant.
“All funds are to be spent to support costs associated with Article 6 eligible services / state aid-eligible,” he said. “These funds will help support several different public health projects over the next year.”
