Our Work
The Rural Health Institute of New York (RHI) aims to address large scale public health issues, such as substance use, mental health, and literacy, in rural New York by employing an evidence-based approach using community-focused epidemiological surveillance. We investigate factors like age, gender, geography, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status to understand their impact on health outcomes. Collaborating with communities and stakeholders, RHI works to support equitable health outcomes for individuals and families by identifying and addressing risk and protective factors. The primary focus lies in reducing health disparities, comprehending their causes, and implementing evidence-based solutions. RHI fosters community collaboration, implements and scales up initiatives, develops data infrastructure, and coordinates health communications to build healthier communities throughout rural New York, while also addressing social determinants of health.
RHI is an independent nonprofit organization that equips rural New York communities with insights and strategies to enable them to improve the health of people and families.
Early on, RHI focused on evidence-based public health approaches to prevent youth problem behaviors including underage drinking, tobacco use, violence, delinquency, school dropout and substance use. Our work has expanded to cover data-driven public health initiatives throughout Central New York, and we are working to support all of rural New York. We know we won’t be able to work in every rural NYS community right away, but we’re trying to build partnerships across the state as we build toward that goal.
You can read about how we came to do the work we do on our history and our key funders and partners pages. You can also read about the team that makes it all happen.
RHI has expertise in three primary areas of expertise that contributes to our success: data & epidemiology, administrative and collaborative leadership, and design and health communications. These “core competencies” aren’t unrelated areas of expertise, but all feed into each other. We use data to drive our collaborative action planning and to inform our health communications campaigns with locally relevant information; we use our partnerships to identify key issues and disseminate evidence-based information to multiple audiences; we use our design and marketing skills to effectively share local data with relevant partners and help build data literacy.
Data & Epidemiology: the core of RHI’s decision making process that guides all projects and activities. This decision-making process includes designing protocols that help answer targeted questions; collecting and analyzing data; and using a scientific approach in decision-making. We have two full-time epidemiologists to support our data-driven work.
Administrative & Collaborative Leadership: RHI’s work to plan, secure funding for, facilitate, and scale collaborative projects by building multi-stakeholder partnerships. We serve as a network manager, providing backbone support to build capacity, assess readiness, align resources, coordinate activities, and assess outcomes.
Design & Health Communications: RHI uses local data and local relationships to design and implement effective, fact-based, locally relevant health communications campaigns aimed at educating and changing cultures and behaviors to make our community safer. The design process at RHI relies on continuous improvement, making small changes, testing, and deploying solutions.
