Our three core areas of expertise help build public health infrastructure to support rural communities
RHI has three "core competencies," three areas of expertise that we use to help bolster our partners' capacity to support the communities we work with:
Data and Epidemiology: Our 3 full-time, MPH-holding Epidemiologists support partners through contracted data collection and analysis as well as project evaluation/assessment. We administer and analyze county-wide youth surveys in Cortland and Chenango Counties and work with communities to make data accessible and actionable.
Administration and Collaborative Infrastructure: Building on our extensive experience applying for and managing grant-funded projects, we support coalitions and collaborations. We work with partners to apply and adapt our processes, building tools and systems that move us toward shared, measurable goals.
Design and Health Communication: Our full-time Graphic Designer works with our interdisciplinary team and partners to create unique, place-based, illustrations and designs. We pair these visuals with evidence-based messaging, based on local data when we have it, to inform tailored social norming and social marketing health communication strategies.
We see these three areas of expertise all as different kinds of public health infrastructure–the systems and processes and relationships that support and facilitate public health work. Focusing on public health infrastructure allows us to make the most of the similarities between different rural communities, building systems and procedures that provide a strong and well-tested foundation to build on and to tailor to the unique needs of a given community. We can more easily translate solutions from one county to another, and can more easily facilitate regional collaborations, while still centering the needs of the community we’re supporting.
Combining Different Kinds of Expertise In-House
We focus on different things than most prevention and public health organizations, and we have different skills and experiences because of that. We can complement agencies that focus on direct services, learning from each other. We can bring ideas, solutions, and tools that partners might not have thought of. We work on a wide variety of topics + engage in a variety of domains beyond public health. Our model allows us to change quickly, to take risks, and to try new things.
Because we have staff with such diverse backgrounds and skill sets, we have fewer barriers between different kinds of expertise than if another agency hired a consultant. Our illustrator can walk down the hall to talk to our epidemiologists; our direct service staff message directly with our database designer. Having staff with these skill sets as part of one team means we learn from and use each other’s expertise more easily.
Read below to learn more about our areas of expertise, or, if you’re ready to collaborate, you can learn more about the products and services we offer to rural communities by visiting our Partner Portal. On the Portal, you can access our data and strategy reports, our dashboards, and the evidence-based health communications campaigns that we have designed and built messaging for.
Data +
Epidemiology
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Every year since 2002, RHI has surveyed 7th-12th grade students in Cortland County about substance use behaviors and risk and protective factors that predict adolescent problem behaviors. Starting in 2023, we began using a new survey that goes beyond prevention to collect data about general health behaviors, like sleep, nutrition, mental health, and disability. The data from this survey helps inform the Community Health Improvement Plan, drives our population and topical focuses, and helps us make a case for the need for additional funding through grant programs. We are working with neighboring counties to standardize what survey they use and how they administer it to build better data infrastructure throughout rural NYS, so that we can better see trends and more effectively apply for funding to address disparities.
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Our two full-time epidemiologists allow us to provide robust support to partners who want to better understand their impact or whose funders require specific data collection and reporting. Agencies can contract with us for assessment and evaluation services, landscape analyses, survey development and analysis, reviews of evidence-based best practices, data-driven action planning, improved data collection procedures, and data communication (reports, dashboards, presentations). Often, these data contracts begin to fulfill grant requirements, but grow into more holistic collaborations that include facilitation or design/communications services as well.
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We understand that data is often not accessible to the average person in rural NYS, or even to the average public health worker. We want the data we collect and share to be as meaningful and as impactful as possible. That’s why we’re committed to helping improve data literacy. We do this in many ways, from making data more present (foregrounding it in communications campaigns) to novel ways of presenting data (like in interactive dashboards instead of just tables), from targeted conversations with partners about data relevant to them to strategically designed reports that are more accessible to readers with a range of backgrounds.
Administrative +
Collaborative Leadership
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We have experience building and managing coalitions through data-driven action planning. The coalitions we run aim to make meaningful change, not just provide a forum for agencies to talk to each other (though that is important). We have experienced project directors/coordinators on staff who work together to support each other's coalitions. We can help guide partners through this process of setting goals and objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). RHI or RHI staff currently lead harm reduction, homelessness, suicide prevention, and literacy coalitions, and we are in the process of establishing a coalition focused on lead.
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We both support partners’ applications for grant-funded projects and we organize and apply for grant funding ourselves. We have experience writing proposals, navigating the state and federal submission systems, and coordinating partners for collaborative applications. We understand that many direct service providers don’t have the experience, time, or resources to apply for grant funding, and we want to help supplement that capacity. If we help partners apply for funding, we often later contract with them to provide data or communications support during implementation.
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Our staff has a lot of experience and knowledge to help partners improve community health, and we want to share that through trainings and technical assistance. However, we don’t know everything. We work hard to build relationships with people who know things we don’t, or who can help us find those people. We’re forming partnerships with other PHIs, regulatory agencies, direct service providers, and academic institutions to help fill our knowledge gaps. We want to make sure that when we don’t have the expertise to help a partner, we can connect them with someone who does.
Design +
Health Communicaiton
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We have a full-time graphic designer who works with our data team and with partners to develop recognizable, local place-based images that people can connect to their daily lives. These graphics will matter more to them than cookie-cutter images from national campaigns or local campaigns that use stock images, and when we pair those images with evidence-based messaging and local data, we catch and hold attention. We have graphics which show a wide variety of specific locations throughout Cortland County, Onondaga County, Cayuga County, Tompkins County, and beyond.
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RHI has data to support a wide variety of public health information campaigns and has already developed messaging and graphics for many campaigns and is happy to share these with partner agencies. You can buy a campaign as-is, and we'll customize it with your logo and messaging to match your needs, or we can work with you to build a custom campaign. We've designed evidence-based social norming and social marketing campaigns that fulfill requirements for DFC and PFS grants. Additionally, we've worked with disability and LGBTQIA+ service providers to develop representations of these identities that are inclusive and accessible.
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Repeated exposure to a message is necessary for most people to retain the message. Our hope at RHI is that partner agencies will use the library of ready-made campaigns to present unified, data-driven messages about important public health issues in a coordinated and wide-reaching way. Building off the success of the Healing Cortland Project, we have a workgroup of Central New York partner agencies who coordinate to share mutually relevant campaigns through their various channels to expand reach, geographically and demographically. We meet periodically to share campaigns when an appropriate awareness month happens or an agency has a targeted project or event.