rural health

The van, which is about the size of a food truck, will travel throughout the county and reach people where health services and providers are less accessible outside cities like Corning, Hornell and Bath.

At school-based health centers, children can get check-ups, shots, and basic health care, all inside the school building. When COVID first hit in 2020, New York’s schools shut down, but many of the small doctor’s offices inside of them didn’t.

“If you have access to health care right away, in your own community, it's much better than having to be transported for 45 minutes, an hour or longer to care."

“We had one call, [the dispatcher called] 23 agencies, and no ambulance was available. To the point where the dispatcher called the house back and said, ‘We’ve got nothing. You have to find your own way to the hospital.’"

The jobs come with benefits and pay is higher than what many private home health agencies offer. But the county hasn’t gotten many applicants yet.

A New York bill allowing air ambulances to carry blood for emergency transfusion was signed into law last week. Local officials say the measure is a crucial step toward saving lives.

“Our impression is that probably, you can find five percent, maybe even up to ten percent in areas, it definitely seems to be increasing.”

"It was a cycle that individuals were kind of in the hamster wheel on, and some of them are just getting back to comfortable being in the stores now."

“Crisis is a very relative term, right,” she said. “What is a crisis to one person may not be a crisis to another.”

"This early in the process of vaccine administration, to have difficulty filling appointments is concerning."