Community Partner Stipend
2024 AHEI Community Partner Stipend awardees
Advancing Healthcare Excellence and Inclusion’s Community Partner Stipends support innovative community health and health equity projects led by AHEI hospitals and their 501(c)(3) community partners. HANYS awarded eight stipends of $20,000 each to our hospitals’ community partner organizations to support their work. This year’s award recipients are:
SBH Health System | Bronx
Project EATS
This is the program’s second year receiving this award. The goal of the program is to provide nutrition education, including how to prepare healthy meals and read nutrition labels, and hands-on urban farming experience to high school students. All instruction takes place at the SBH Wellness Center. Project EATS provides neighborhood-based organic, urban farms in areas where people do not have access or cannot afford fresh food.
Bassett Healthcare Network | Otsego County
Connections: Operated by the Otsego County Senior Citizens Council
Connections serves older adults in rural counties, especially those who live alone or are at risk of disease or negative health conditions from social isolation. This is the program’s second year receiving this award. Building on previous efforts, Connections will survey participants and use Better Age software to get a baseline understanding of their health and wellbeing. Connections will also hold a series of focus groups. Data from the survey and focus groups will be used to tailor services to the needs and preferences of the population they serve, and to create a personal health and welfare report for each survey participant.
One Brooklyn Health | Brooklyn
Brooklyn Packers and Cultivating Justice LLC and Dreyfus Health Policy & Research Center
Dreyfus will launch a community-supported agriculture initiative to provide consistent access to fresh, affordable produce. The program also plans to design an outreach and educational campaign on the benefits of fresh produce and CSA participation to increase nutrition knowledge.
Vassar Brothers Medical Center | Dutchess County
Dutchess Outreach
This partnership will develop a Food as Medicine program, connecting hypertensive (stage 2) patients experiencing food insecurity with a registered dietician nutritionist. Patients will receive nutrition education and two weeks of meals and groceries tailored to their needs and preferences.
Jamaica Hospital Medical Center | Queens
King of Kings and Community Kitchen and Food Pantry
This partnership supports a community kitchen and food pantry which will hold events twice per month over eight months. Participants will receive nutrition education, learn about the benefits of physical activity and attend healthy cooking demonstrations for children and adults. They will also receive free or low-cost healthy meals and ingredients and connections to WIC/SNAP, community gardens, farmer’s markets and other nutrition services.
Falck Cancer Center | Chemung County
Meals While You Heal: Meals on Wheels of Chemung County and the Food Bank of the Southern Tier
Meals While You Heal aims to provide nutritious food to people undergoing cancer treatment. The stipend will allow the program to purchase additional meals and a larger freezer where food can be stored in the Falck Center.
St. Lawrence Health | Potsdam
The Kid Power Program: North Country Children’s Museum, Clarkson University, Cornell Cooperative Extension and the Potsdam Food Co-op
The Kid Power Program is a health education program for low-income families. The program will provide health and nutrition classes for museum visitors, pre-K and after-school cooking and health classes, monthly family health workshops and a week-long health science camp.
Maimonides Medical Center | Brooklyn
Rainbow Heights Club
This initiative will provide training sessions on LGBTQ+ mental health to Maimonides employees. Using curriculum approved by the New York State Department of Health, Rainbow Heights Club will discuss how stigma impacts LGBTQ+ patients diagnosed with serious mental illness and how healthcare workers can best support them in the hospital setting. Maimonides and Rainbow Heights Club will also develop a mental health services resource guide, which hospital staff will distribute at the 2024 Brooklyn Pride event.
Timeline
Participation requirements
- Enter into an agreement with HERF to be reimbursed for up to $20,000 for health equity work done in partnership with AHEI hospitals.
- Attend one mandatory 1.5 hour online educational presentations in February 2024: a health equity overview and a financial orientation, which will cover expense reporting requirements.
- Meet at least bi-monthly with their HANYS project manager and partner hospital or health system, between March and Oct. 2024.
- Submit the interim report and financial reimbursement request workbook form by Aug. 1, 2024.
- Submit the final report, financial reimbursement request workbook and other required attachments by Nov. 8, 2024.
Applicant resources
Send all application materials and/or questions to Maria Baum, stipend project lead, at mbaum@hanys.org.
