Results Of 7-County Survey To Guide Community Health Interventions

Cooperstown, NY – Results from the Bassett Research Institute’s seven county health survey in central New York show a troubling continued climb in the number of overweight and obese people. At the same time, the incidence of high blood pressure and diabetes may have leveled off. Those are just some of the findings from the Upstate New York Health and Wellness Survey, which was mailed last year to 55,000 people living in Otsego, Herkimer, Chenango, Madison, Delaware, Montgomery and Schoharie counties.

“We expected this survey to answer some questions and to generate a number of new ones. So far, some of the initial findings are surprising,” notes Dr. John May, director of the Bassett Research Institute. “The goal is to take what we learn and use it to develop interventions to improve the health of the population we serve in central New York.”

There is good news out of the 2009 Upstate Health and Wellness Survey around efforts to curb cancer rates and get more men and women to take advantage of preventive health tests. The number of women who have had a Pap test in the last three years has climbed, although it is still below the state and national average. The results were similar for women who have had a screening mammogram.

The survey was a collaborative effort between the Bassett Research Institute in Cooperstown and seven county public health departments. It is the third installment of a once-a-decade survey first begun by Bassett in 1989, and it is the kind of work New York’s Commissioner of Health asked for when announcing the state’s Prevention Agenda last year. Health care providers, local health departments and others have been asked to “collaborate at the community level to improve the health status of New Yorkers through increased emphasis on prevention”: Prevention Agenda Toward the Healthiest State.

May explains that the next step, once the work of analyzing the survey results is finished, is to share the information with county health departments and begin the work of designing health improvement strategies. The regional nature of the Bassett Healthcare Network makes it ideal to pilot interventions that could reduce, for instance, the incidence of diabetes and high blood pressure. In fact, Bassett’s Challenge Diabetes program has already been successful in preventing type 2 diabetes in some adults.

David Strogatz, Ph.D., who will become director of the Bassett Research Institute Center for Rural Community Health in January, will lead the task of developing community interventions. Dr. Strogatz is an epidemiologist with expertise in community-level health interventions. He comes to Bassett from the Albany School of Public Health where he served as chair of the Department of Epidemiology and as director of a CDC-designated Prevention Center.

The Center for Rural Community Health will work with state and local public health agencies and Bassett health professionals to develop and test community-level interventions designed to address the most serious health challenges affecting people in Bassett’s catchment area. Currently, Dr. Strogatz is advising Bassett researchers Ida Baker and Jennie Kreis on a project aimed at assessing rural worksites as useful locations for weight control intervention. Other Bassett researchers are working in schools to enhance nutrition education and reduce tobacco use. These and a series of new activities will be tried and formally evaluated by Center for Rural Community Health scientists. Programs that prove effective will be offered to communities across the eight county region Bassett serves.