Clinical Care in New York
Increasing Access to Clinical Care for Vulnerable New Yorkers
Barriers to clinical care, including lack of access to health insurance, increasingly high medical costs, prevailing language barriers and more, prevent many New Yorkers from receiving the treatment required to live a healthy life. To improve health outcomes for vulnerable New Yorkers, the Foundation continues to support local nonprofits working directly in communities across New York to address the gap in clinical care.
One such grantee is BestSelf Behavioral Health (BBH), the largest community-based behavioral health organization in Western New York. BBH provides mental health and substance use disorder counseling, education and vocational support, mobile mental health and substance use disorder services, homeless outreach and housing, school-based support, and services for child abuse victims at our Child Advocacy Center to over 40,000 children, youth, and adults at more than 70 locations across Western New York. The Foundation provided BBH with a grant of $350,000 for its Primary and Behavioral Health Care Integration Program, designed to address both the medical and behavioral healthcare needs of individuals with serious mental illness. This program will provide 1,000 New Yorkers with serious mental health issues specialized care in 2022.
On Long Island, the Hispanic Counseling Center Inc. (HCC), founded over 45 years ago, enhances the strengths of Long Island families and children through culturally competent bilingual, bicultural counseling, prevention, vocational, and educational services to improve behavior, self-esteem, and family relations, foster economic independence, and increase school engagement and academic improvement for the growing, but often underserved, Hispanic immigrant population on Long Island. The HCC Mental Health Clinic received a Foundation grant of $100,000 to break the familial cycle of domestic violence and abuse through treatment, education, and support services for children affected by domestic violence. The grant supports four FTE social workers who treat 110 children from underserved, low-income Hispanic families.
Since 1993, St. Joseph’s Neighborhood Center (SJNC) has responded to the needs of uninsured and under-insured persons who lack access to primary care, specialty medicine, mental health counseling, social services, and adult education in Rochester and the Finger Lakes region. SJNC provides medical, mental health, and health access services to over 3,000 low-income individuals and families who struggle to access and afford their healthcare. All services are provided on a sliding scale, and SJNC operates without insurance reimbursements. The Foundation’s grant of $300,000 to SJNC will help expand SJNC’s capacity to provide comprehensive, integrated care in one convenient location, supporting an additional 1,200 patient visits, with a special focus on the social determinants of health and patient-centered care. With support from the Foundation, SJNC works to provide health to the community, by the community.
Community oriented organizations across New York are leading the way in addressing gaps in care by meeting communities where they are, all in order to improve health outcomes. To learn more about the organizations listed above, you can go to their websites:
