The New Prevention Fund

New York and the New Prevention Fund:
An Investment in the Future Health of America

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) included the creation of a Prevention Fund – to provide communities around the country with more than $16 billion over the next 10 years to invest in effective, provide prevention efforts, like childhood obesity prevention and tobacco cessation.

New York is receiving 26150489 from the Prevention Fund this year to reduce disease rates in the state and help ensure today’s children are not the first generation in U.S. history to live shorter, less healthy lives than their parent.

Preventing disease and injury is the most effective, common-sense way to improve health in the United States. Too often, however, we focus on treating disease and injury after they occur instead of preventing them – providing sick care instead of health care.

The ACA and the Prevention Fund give us the opportunity to turn that around – and provides the opportunity for all Americans to be as healthy as they can be.

Prevention Fund Grants	Amount	Description
Communities Putting Prevention to Work	$31.1 Million*	New York is using funds to implement media campaigns to raise awareness of the state’s Quitline during months with historically low Quitline call volumes. During the first month of the campaign, there was a 38 percent increase in the number of calls to the state Quitline compared to the same time period the year before. The state Department of Health is building on this success by conducting similar campaigns during 2011. The City University of New York (CUNY) approved an expanded tobacco policy making CUNY the largest smoke-free public university system in the United States. The policy prohibits the use of tobacco on all grounds and facilities under CUNY’s jurisdiction — indoor and outdoor– as well as tobacco industry promotions and marketing on campus properties, and tobacco industry sponsorship of athletic events and athletes. New York City used funds to train 350 staff from clinical and social services agencies that work with clients with mental health issues on integration of tobacco dependence treatment into client services. New York City has launched a Pay for Performance project that promotes treatment of smokers identified by providers working in Community Health Centers in New York City. Twenty-three centers serving more than 400,000 mostly low-income New Yorkers are participating in the program. In addition to monetary incentives, Community Health Center staff receive training and technical assistance on electronic health record prompts and incorporating changes into their practice to make screening and treatment for tobacco routine. New York City is developing a total of six new media campaigns over a two year period to encourage NYC smokers to quit and stay quit. The campaign “Secondhand Smoke Kids” generated significant earned media, as well as increases in calls to the state Quitline to get help quitting smoking. Their latest campaign, “Suffering Every Minute of Every Day,” is currently being aired as part of the city’s annual Nicotine Patch and Gum Program giveaway and has helped the city achieve record demand for the program thus far. The New York City Council approved a measure to prevent smoking in all city parks and on all city beaches reducing exposure to secondhand smoke in the City’s 1,700 parks, 14 miles of beaches and pedestrian malls and plazas. New York City unveiled a new media salt awareness campaign urging consumers to compare labels and select foods with less sodium. The campaign was placed on 20 percent of all New York City subway cars and generated 63.5 million “impressions” from the public. New York City successfully installed water jets in 144 public schools, and supported a policy that requires all drinking fountains to have a separate faucet designed for filling containers and removes a provision that allowed bottle water vending machines in lieu of water fountains. In New York, The Walkers for Wellness program is bringing walking clubs and better nutrition to 100 faith-based organizations representing more than 10,000 New York City congregants of many faiths. Beth Hark Christian Counseling Center/Bethel Gospel Assembly has started a walking club that meets twice a week. In addition, the Center adopted healthful new food policies, including reducing the availability of sugar-sweetened beverages at all Center functions. Another faith-based organization, God’s Battalion of Prayer Church has also successfully implemented the Walkers for Wellness and healthier foods programs. NYC’s Active Design Guidelines, developed by a partnership including the NYC Departments of Health and Mental Hygiene, Design and Construction, Transportation and City Planning, provide architects and urban designers with a host of strategies for creating healthier buildings, streets, and urban spaces, based on the latest academic research and best practices in the field. For example, designers and building managers have used the Guidelines to design and maintain attractive stairwells so people will use them. Released in January 2010, the Guidelines have received national awards by RWJF for Translating Research to Policy, the American Institute of Architects for Collaboration, and the Sustainable Buildings Industry Council. More than 3,000 hard copies have been distributed and approximately 7,000 electronic copies downloaded thus far. To date, more than 900 architects, planners and real estate professionals have received training on implementing the Guidelines. The building owners and managers of more than 1,000 buildings have received technical assistance and support to make their buildings healthier through active design measures. In response to developers seeking help to create healthier environments, an innovation credit for physical activity-promoting design has been created for developers and architects to use toward green building certification; it has been incorporated into eight large building projects, including housing, office buildings, public buildings and healthcare facilities in NYC and other U.S. cities. Move-to-Improve is a physical education program designed for NYC’s 500,000 elementary school students and the 20,000 elementary school teachers who teach them. Because schools in NYC are not meeting the state physical education requirement of 150 minutes per week, the goal of the program is to train classroom teachers to add physical education minutes by implementing 10 minute bouts of physical education, or Fitness Breaks, right in their classrooms. Since March 2010, Move-to-Improve staff have developed a curriculum for 4th and 5th grades—school years that require more intensive academic integration given that these grades are state and national academic testing years. Through this initiative, there are now 2,000 additional K-5 teachers trained in leading in-class physical education. The curriculum will be posted on both DOHMH and DOE’s websites in late spring 2011 so that other school districts have the opportunity to increase their physical education minutes. Since March 2010, NYC DOHMH staff has conducted educational sessions to inform organizational leaders about the risks of sugary drink consumption and to present policies and activities that organizations can implement to promote healthier beverage options. So far, 88 organizations (33 percent) have implemented one or more health-promoting policy changes, including changing the composition of beverages for sale in vending machines, educating employees/members about the risks of sugar-sweetened beverage consumption, implementing healthy meeting food and drink guidelines, and making healthier drinks less expensive than sugary drinks. The NYC Health Department Nicotine Patch and Gum Giveaway Program (NPGP) was able to extend and expand the reach of their annual giveaway with the support of the CPPW funding. The Department launched a bold new public-education campaign, “Suffering,” that shows the long-term suffering smoking can cause. Instead of focusing on mortality, the campaign tells viewers how dying from smoking is rarely quick and is never painless. Beginning in June, the NYC Health Department will send relapse prevention emails and mailings to all 2011 Nicotine Patch and Gum Giveaway Program (NPGP) enrollees providing them with additional tips to stay smoke-free. This year, more than 39,000 smokers enrolled in the program, representing 4 percent of all current smokers and 26 percent of all heavy smokers in New York City, with an average of 2,400 people enrolling each day. As a result of this year’s NPGP campaign, it is estimated that approximately 13,000 of these smokers will quit. Since 2003, the Health Department has distributed nicotine patches and gum to 250,000 New York City smokers during annual giveaways, enabling an estimated 80,000 people to quit. The NYC Health Department recently concluded its annual Nicotine Patch and Gum Giveaway Program (NPGP). In efforts to target groups of smokers with previously low utilization rates, but high rates of smoking, specific media outreach was conducted within the Russian community. Outreach included translated web content, as well as NPGP promotion on the radio and in local ethnic newspapers. The Health Department also offered assisted enrollment for Russian speakers. The outreach efforts resulted in almost 500 Russian speakers enrolling in the program online, which is ten times higher than the number of Russian-speaking enrollees in the 2010 program NYC launched their CPPW Physical Activity campaign on June 6, 2011. The new campaign rallies New Yorkers to “Make NYC Your Gym” by using active transportation and also by tapping into the newly revamped BeFitNYC.org. BeFitNYC is a Parks Department-hosted source for free and low-cost fitness ideas in parks and recreation centers across the City. The Health and Parks departments worked together to improve and grow the site, and NYC had launch events in all five boroughs of the City, starting with an outdoor public Zumba class in Madison Square Park in Manhattan. The ad campaign will be on NYC subways, bus shelters, a few newspapers, radio, and the internet all summer long, and street teams will remind New Yorkers how easy and how much fun it is to Make NYC Your Gym. It is expected that the campaign will reach over 3,825,000 New Yorkers. On February 2, 2011 the New York City Council approved a bill to ban smoking in all city parks and on all city beaches. The measure will prohibit smoking in the city’s 1,700 parks and along the 14 miles of beaches, as well as pedestrian malls and plazas. A city-wide public information campaign launched on May 22nd to educate New Yorkers on the recently-passed policy. The campaign consists of TV ads, subway squares and newspaper wraps. A press conference including the Commissioners of Health and Parks and Recreation was held on Coney Island to celebrate this historic event. The 52 million people who visit NYC parks and the 19 million visitors to the seven beaches each year will now have access to cleaner, healthier air quality.
Public Health Infrastructure	New York State Department of Health $400,000 (FY10) $500,000 (FY11); New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene $2,060,128 (FY10) $1,093,662 (FY11)	Awarded to state, tribal, local and territorial health departments to improve their ability to provide public health services. The 5-year cooperative agreement program will provide health departments with needed resources to make fundamental changes in their organizations and practices, so that they can improve the delivery of public health services including: Building and implementing capacity within health departments for evaluating the effectiveness of their organizations, practices, partnerships, programs and use of resources through performance management; Expansion and training of public health staff and community leaders to conduct policy activities in key areas and to facilitate improvements in system efficiency; Maximizing the public health system to improve networking, coordination, and cross-jurisdictional cooperation for the delivery of public health services to address resource sharing and improve health indicators; Disseminating, implementing and evaluating public health’s best and most promising practices; and Building a national network of performance improvement managers that share best practices for improving the public health system.
Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Infectious Diseases	New York State Department of Health $374,166 (FY10) $487,947 (FY11); New York City Health and Mental Hygiene $340,392 (FY10) $1,342,974 (FY11)	The funding, which is provided through Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Infectious Diseases (ELC) and the Emerging Infections Program (EIP) cooperative agreements, is intended to increase epidemiology, laboratory and health information systems capacity at health departments. The award is to support: hiring and training of epidemiologists, laboratory scientists, and health information specialists who can work on multiple infectious diseases; increasing the number of modern, well-equipped public health laboratories using electronic laboratory information systems to manage and exchange information effectively between labs and public health departments; and developing capacity for public health departments to participate in meaningful use of electronic health records, e.g. through implementation of electronic laboratory-based reporting according to national standards.
ARRA evaluation (Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System)	N/A	Supplemental funding for BRFSS to increase the sample size and enable more precise estimates of risk factors to be calculated. This funding would also increase the proportion of BRFSS interviews that are completed by cell phone, and add a mental illness m
HIV Laboratory	New York State Department of Health $307,033; New York City Health and Mental Hygiene $393,380	CDC awarded grants to expand HIV prevention efforts under the President’s National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS). The funding, allocated to CDC by the President as part of NHAS, will help to further focus HIV prevention on high risk populations and communities, as well as fill critical gaps in data, knowledge and understanding of the epidemic. The majority of the grants will support demonstration projects to identify and implement a “combination approach” to enhance effective HIV prevention programming in 12 hard-hit areas across the country. These efforts will determine what mix of HIV prevention approaches can have the greatest impact in the local area, supplementing existing programs in these communities and helping jurisdictions to better focus efforts on key at-risk populations and fulfill unmet needs. Grants went to state and local health departments to increase HIV testing opportunities for populations disproportionately affected by HIV and help link HIV-infected persons with appropriate services, as well as to improve the reporting of HIV data.
HIV Testing	New York State Department of Health $145,567; New York City Health and Mental Hygiene $145,567	CDC awarded grants to expand HIV prevention efforts under the President’s National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS). The funding, allocated to CDC by the President as part of NHAS, will help to further focus HIV prevention on high risk populations and communities, as well as fill critical gaps in data, knowledge and understanding of the epidemic. The majority of the grants will support demonstration projects to identify and implement a “combination approach” to enhance effective HIV prevention programming in 12 hard-hit areas across the country. These efforts will determine what mix of HIV prevention approaches can have the greatest impact in the local area, supplementing existing programs in these communities and helping jurisdictions to better focus efforts on key at-risk populations and fulfill unmet needs. Grants went to state and local health departments to increase HIV testing opportunities for populations disproportionately affected by HIV and help link HIV-infected persons with appropriate services, as well as to improve the reporting of HIV data.
HIV Planning	$1,581,184	CDC awarded grants to expand HIV prevention efforts under the President’s National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS). The funding, allocated to CDC by the President as part of NHAS, will help to further focus HIV prevention on high risk populations and communities, as well as fill critical gaps in data, knowledge and understanding of the epidemic. The majority of the grants will support demonstration projects to identify and implement a “combination approach” to enhance effective HIV prevention programming in 12 hard-hit areas across the country. These efforts will determine what mix of HIV prevention approaches can have the greatest impact in the local area, supplementing existing programs in these communities and helping jurisdictions to better focus efforts on key at-risk populations and fulfill unmet needs. Grants went to state and local health departments to increase HIV testing opportunities for populations disproportionately affected by HIV and help link HIV-infected persons with appropriate services, as well as to improve the reporting of HIV data.
Emerging Infections Program	New York State Department of Health $202,009 (FY10); $300,477 (FY11)	The funding, which is provided through Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Infectious Diseases (ELC) and the Emerging Infections Program (EIP) cooperative agreements, is intended to increase epidemiology, laboratory and health information systems capacity at health departments. The award is to support: hiring and training of epidemiologists, laboratory scientists, and health information specialists who can work on multiple infectious diseases; increasing the number of modern, well-equipped public health laboratories using electronic laboratory information systems to manage and exchange information effectively between labs and public health departments; and developing capacity for public health departments to participate in meaningful use of electronic health records, e.g. through implementation of electronic laboratory-based reporting according to national standards.
Capacity Building Grants	N/A	Money awarded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will go to various national, non-profit professional public health organizations to support efforts by state, tribal, local and territorial health departments to ensure successful adoption of effective practices that strengthen core public health infrastructure investments. These national public health organizations will provide technical assistance, training, and information for health departments to improve their public health infrastructure and the delivery of public health services.
Tobacco Prevention	150,543 (FY10); CDC Tobacco Quitlines $213,269 (FY11)	State Supplemental Funding for Healthy Communities will be used to help states implement plans to reduce tobacco use through legislative, regulatory, and educational arenas, as well as enhance and expand the national network of tobacco cessation quitlines to significantly increase the number of tobacco users who quit. Money will also support states and terrritories enhance and expand the national network of tobacco cessation quitlines to increase the number of tobacco users who quit. Quitlines are hte toll-free numbers people can call to obtain smoking cessation treatments and services.
Health Care Surveillance	$0	Grants to fund data collection and analysis to monitor the impact of the Affordable Care Act on the health of Americans and boost the collection and analysis of environmental hazards data to protect the health of communities.
Workforce	N/A	The programs are designed to build the primary care workforce and provide community-based prevention. States will receive funding to support comprehensive workforce planning and implementation strategies that best address local current and projected workforce shortages.
Training Centers—HRSA	The Research Foundation of the State University of New York $649,921; University of Medicine and Dentistry of New York-School of Public Health $647,654; The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York $650,000 (FY11)	The Public Health Training Centers Program helps improve the public health system by enhancing skills of the current and future public health workforce. Funded organizations (1) plan, develop, operate and evaluate projects that support goals established by the Secretary in preventive medicine, health promotion and disease prevention; or (2) improve access to and quality of health services in medically underserved communities. Other PHTC activities include assessing the learning needs of the public health workforce; providing accessible training; and working with organizations to meet strategic planning, education, and resource needs.
Primary care and Behavioral Health Services	Postgraduate Center for Mental Health $496,372; ICD-International Center for the Disabled $500,000; Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center $496,135; St. Barnabas Hospital $496,863; State of New York $8,330,000 (FY11)	The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) at HHS awarded grants to support and promote better primary care and behavioral health services for individuals with mental illnesses or substance use disorders. The grants seek to improve health by improving the coordination of healthcare services delivered in publicly funded community mental health and other community-based behavioral health settings.

*One-Time Funding from FY2010

Trust for America’s Health is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to saving lives by protecting the health of every community and working to make disease prevention a national priority. www.healthyamericans.org

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation focuses on the pressing health and health care issues facing our country. As the nation’s largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to improving the health and health care of all Americans, the Foundation works with a diverse group of organizations and individuals to identify solutions and achieve comprehensive, meaningful and timely change. For more than 35 years the Foundation has brought experience, commitment, and a rigorous, balanced approach to the problems that affect the health and health care of those it serves. Helping Americans lead healthier lives and get the care they need–the Foundation expects to make a difference in our lifetime. For more information, visit www.rwjf.org.

New York and the New Prevention Fund: An Investment in the Future Health of America

Related Readings

New York and the New Prevention Fund:
An Investment in the Future Health of America