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Cayuga County health department presents community health assessment, flags provider shortages and high youth suicide-related emergency visits
Summary
County public-health staff presented a six-year community health assessment identifying critical gaps: limited primary-care and dental providers, about 20% adult food insecurity, chronic absenteeism among students, and the county’s highest-in-state rate of youth suicide-related emergency visits in 2024; the report will inform the Community Health Improvement Plan.
Kathleen Cuddy, the county public health director, introduced a new Community Health Assessment that county staff and public-health educators said will guide a forthcoming Community Health Improvement Plan.
"Measles continuing to spread across The United States. Given travel, we can anticipate this continuing," Cuddy said as she summarized infectious-disease preparedness and other priorities. Megan, the senior public health educator who wrote much of the assessment, told the committee the document combines a countywide survey and national data sources to show where services are weak and where grant funding could be targeted. "Our community health assessment was developed through the use of two primary data-collection methods," Megan said, and the report is intended to drive the CHIP and grant applications.
The assessment highlighted several concrete concerns: a severe shortage of primary-care providers (presenters noted roughly 20 primary-care providers per 100,000 residents in the county, compared with substantially higher rates nearby), just one OB-GYN serving the county, and only three dental providers who accept Medicaid. Presenters said these access gaps are pushing residents to seek care outside the county or defer care.
Megan also cited troubling behavioral-health indicators. Using hospital emergency-department data through 2024, the assessment identified the county as having the highest rate in the state (outside New York City) of suicide-related emergency department visits among youth ages 10–19. "This was something we were particularly surprised by," Megan told the committee, and staff emphasized the figure combines nonfatal self-injury and other suicidal behaviors reported in ED records.
Other findings: chronic absenteeism in K–8 schools affects roughly 25% of students overall and rises for economically disadvantaged students; nearly 20% of county adults reported food insecurity in the survey; and social determinants such as transportation, housing instability and lower income were cited as cross-cutting drivers of poor outcomes.
Public-health staff said the assessment will underpin grant applications and program design, including surveillance and prevention for infectious disease, expansion of lead-poisoning prevention efforts, and initiatives to address mental-health access. Lauren Walsh, representing community services and behavioral-health planning, told legislators the department is reviewing several federal funding opportunities, including a SAMHSA "zero suicide" announcement, to try to align resources with the assessment's priorities.
The committee did not take a formal vote on the assessment itself at this meeting; presenters said the report will be used by the health department and partner agencies when seeking grants and preparing the CHIP.
