Center for Community Health & Prevention
“2021 is off to a great start at the Center for Community Health & Prevention! I’m excited to share highlights of the outstanding work our staff are doing to expand our outreach and advance health equity and education in our region.” Nancy M. Bennett, M.D., M.S., director of the Center for Community Health & Prevention
Community Outreach and Impact: Spring 2021
Cancer Prevention: Empowering and Serving Promote Health. Prevent Cancer. (PHPC) – In partnership with UR Medicine’s Wilmot Cancer Institute, the Promote Health. Prevent Cancer. initiative empowers participants throughout 27 counties to make and maintain changes in diet, physical activity and exposures, helping lower the risk of cancer and other chronic diseases. Virtual Health Classes and Talks Empower Participants During Pandemic. • A total of 9 virtual eight-week nutrition and physical activity programs offered since January, with participants joining virtually from 10 counties. 17 more programs are planned through the end of 2021. Participant numbers are projected to more than double this year. • Class topics are also offered as individual one-hour presentations. These health talks, given by members of our PHPC team, are available for community groups, corporate retreats, places of worship and more. 5 one-hour wellness talks have been presented so far in 2021. Interested in learning more? Please contact our team at (585) 738-5539 or email us at PHPC@urmc.rochester.edu.
Eileen Malloy Desormeaux, PHPC participant, Episcopal SeniorLife Communities Neighborhood Program Member “The Promote Health. Prevent Cancer. program really demonstrated how small changes can have a big impact. I now think of ‘good food’ as being delicious and good for my body, not something that’s sweet or full of fat.”
Cancer Services Program of the Finger Lakes Region (CSP-FLR):
National Accreditation Program for Breast Cancer (NAPBC)
Counties served: Monroe, Livingston, Wayne, Ontario, Seneca and Yates October 1, 2019-September 30, 2020, 417 patients were enrolled in and screened under CSP-FLR.
Between August 2020 and March 2021, NAPBC, a grant through Health Research Incorporated and the New York State (NYS) Department of Health, had a 78% completion rate for breast cancer screenings. Hannah Hare, patient navigator for NAPBC, works with women to address barriers that may prevent them from getting screened, including transportation, child care or scheduling.
CSP-FLR works with more than 200 healthcare providers and facilities throughout the Finger Lakes to provide breast, cervical and colorectal cancer screenings at no cost for uninsured men and women.
Screening Rates for Colorectal Cancer Increased in All 6 Counties. Proactive Planning Increases Annual Use of FIT Test Kits. For the past year, the CSP-FLR team has worked to increase the percent of clients re-screened for colorectal cancer annually, using a FIT (fecal immunochemical test) kit. After implementing a new process, the percent of clients re-screened increased from 9% to 22% within 10 months. Community Cancer Education and Free Screening Days. From October 2020 through March 2021, CSP-FLR staff reached 332 individuals with important breast, cervical and colorectal cancer prevention education. Webinars, group and one-to-one education, as well as breast cancer screening days, were offered to community members and regional partners.
Communicable Diseases Surveillance & Prevention (CDSP) Program: COVID-19 and More
Clinical Programs: Reaching New Audiences Using proven strategies and the science of motivation, our multi-disciplinary clinical team helps individuals realize their health goals and works with them to be successful in making healthy lifestyle changes they can maintain for life. All of our patient visits, including individual and group programs, are currently virtual, which has greatly increased access for new and existing patients. New Urology Partnership. Our dietitians formed a new collaboration with the URMC Department of Urology. Our team participates in bi-directional educational sessions with the comprehensive Kidney Stone Treatment Center and works with patients on dietary modifications to help prevent and manage kidney stones. Increase in Vaping Referrals. Our nicotine cessation team is treating more young adults and some adolescents for vaping. Christine Wille, N.P., prescribes pharmacotherapy to young adults and Holly Russell, M.D., our clinical director, consults with pediatricians about prescribing nicotine replacement therapy for adolescents. In conjunction with medication,Nicotine Cessation Specialists Anne Sammler, NCCTP, and Jennifer Lee, C.P.T., see teens for counseling. Diabetes Prevention Benefits for Medicare and Medicaid. The Center’s clinical team provides the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention’s (CDC) evidence-based Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) to individuals on Medicare and Medicaid. This new addition to our long-standing community-based DPP allows us to reach more people in need of preventive services and provides financial sustainability for the program.
Rajat Jain, M.D., assistant professor of Urology, URMC “We are very excited to form a partnership between the Kidney Stone Treatment Center and CCHP to provide nutritional guidance to patients with kidney stones. Our patients often find it difficult to identify which foods and habits contribute to a suboptimal diet. We hope that by sending patients to CCHP, we can intervene directly at this level to curb the recurring nature of kidney stone disease.”
The CDSP program is comprised of the NYS Emerging Infections Program (EIP) and Healthcare Associated Infection Prevention Collaboratives. The NYS EIP is part of the CDC’s national effort to provide population-based communicable disease data to identify disease patterns, evaluate vaccine programs and identify populations at risk. Called on by the CDC: COVID-19 Surveillance. Our EIP team has been busy tracking and reporting COVID-19 hospitalization data for seven counties, including Monroe, Yates, Livingston, Wayne, Ontario, Orleans and Genesee, to the CDC. The data populates the CDC’s COVIDView website, which provides a weekly surveillance summary of U.S. COVID-19 activity. As of late March, there were 6,407 hospitalizations in our region. Our EIP team has also been performing interviews of COVID-19 positive healthcare workers (HCW). This CDC study is taking place at 34 sites nation-wide and seeks to evaluate how well COVID-19 vaccines work in preventing laboratory-confirmed, symptomatic COVID-19 among HCW and is one of many projects analyzing the real-world protection afforded by COVID-19 vaccines. Flu and RSV Almost Non-Existent During Pandemic. The other respiratory viruses our CDSP team performs surveillance for, including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), have not shown resurgence during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Michael Mendoza, M.D., M.P.H., M.S., FAAFP, commissioner of the Monroe County Department of Public Health “The EIP team at the CCHP and the work it has done over the last year have been invaluable. At the beginning of the pandemic, team members volunteered as contact tracers. Now, they continue to work diligently at carrying out COVID-19 surveillance, which we use to inform our decisions and help set our priorities. We are grateful for their dedication to disease surveillance and prevention and to helping our community.”
Center staff are very proud of our Director Dr. Nancy Bennett (a.k.a. “Nana”) for her unwavering
Center for Community Health & Prevention University of Rochester Medical Center 46 Prince Street, Suite 3001 Rochester, NY 14607
commitment to her roles as the lead of the Finger Lakes COVID-19 Vaccine Hub at URMC and co-chair of the Finger Lakes COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force. We applaud the excellent and vital work she has done over the last several months, juggling the challenges of distributing vaccine across a ninecounty region, while continuing to head up our team. Thank you, Nana!
(585) 602-0801 | Fax: (585) 442-3372 urmc.rochester.edu/community-health