Bertrand Chaffee Hospital

In a state as large as New York, a steady stream of smart, innovative work is coming from NYHealth grantees and non-grantees alike that is relevant to NYHealth’s priority areas of Building Healthy Communities and Empowering Health Care Consumers and its focus area on Veterans’ Health.

These organizations should be elevating their work and informing key stakeholders at regional, statewide, and national conferences, meetings, and other convenings. Yet, because of a lack of resources, they are often unable to do so. To address this issue, NYHealth is awarding grants through its Sponsoring Conference Participation in Support of Healthy Communities, Consumer Empowerment, and Veterans’ Health Request for Proposals (RFP). Through this RFP, NYHealth is sponsoring low-resource organizations to attend and present at local, State, and national conferences related to these areas. In 2019, NYHealth awarded the Bertrand Chaffee Hospital (BCH) a grant to participate in this initiative as part of its efforts to support veterans’ health.

Under this grant, BCH sent two members to attend the New York State Association of Rural Health conference. This conference focused on advocating for the health of constituents residing in rural areas of New York State, including veterans and their families. Attendees had the opportunity to learn from sessions specific to issues BCH faces, such as the difficulties in updating rural health IT systems, the increasing number of rural hospital system closures, and the opioid crisis. In addition, there were ample opportunities to network. This conference helped BCH learn about new strategies, programming, and policy changes to improve its ability to best serve the community and its patients, including veterans and their families.

View a complete list of conference participating grantees.