Center for Population Health

Center for Population Health

The Bassett Research Institute was selected by the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) to organize and facilitate population health efforts in a five-county region of central New York as part of the Department of Health's Population Health Improvement Program (PHIP). It is the job of the PHIP to help New York communities to begin addressing the health behaviors, the environmental and socioeconomic conditions that have proven to be the major factors determining a population’s health.

The Center for Population Health Team

The Mohawk Valley Population Health Program (MVPHIP)

The MVPHIP is charged with providing a forum in which stakeholders (including county health departments, hospitals, insurers, agencies, and a wide range of other interested parties) can review the region’s health status and define key priority areas. Decisions are to be based upon information relating to these counties derived from extensive data gathering and analyses by the Research Institute. The MVPHIP then stimulates and supports strategic planning for identifying, sharing, disseminating, and helping to implement best practices and local strategies that promote population health and reduce health care disparities in the five-county region.

The Mohawk Valley Population Health Program (MVPHIP) serves Fulton, Montgomery, Herkimer, Schoharie, and Otsego Counties.

MVPHIP Tasks

MVPHIP Current Priorities

Tick-Borne Disease Research Projects

The Bassett Research Institute (BRI) has recently started research on tick-borne disease exposure throughout the Northeast. BRI plans to work with foresters in New York State to measure the incidence of tick attachment, describe the tick species that most often attach to foresters and to estimate the effectiveness of permethrin treated clothing or use of permethrin spray. 

Additionally, BRI is planning a project with the Northeast Center for Occupational Health and Safety (NEC) to work with agricultural workers in Vermont and Maine, the two states with the highest incidence rates of Lyme disease. The project seeks to determine the ecological risk of tick-borne pathogens, the level of exposure to ticks and tick-borne diseases, the behavioral risk factors associated with tick bites and/or tick-borne disease exposure, and to establish the burden of illness via healthcare utilization and workdays lost.

BRI is also looking forward to future research projects with tick-borne disease.

These projects are being led by Amanda (Mandy) Roome, PhD. For more information she may be reached at: Amanda.Roome@bassett.org

For more information, or to be added to one of our workgroups, please contact either: