Community Health Assessment

Every three years, the health department and community partners survey Essex County residents to identify health challenges. These results form a Community Health Assessment that directs their joint efforts to improve local health.

2025 marked a “Cycle Year” for our county. A cycle year is a pivotal period dedicated to intensive data collection, community listening, and strategic resetting. It is the time when we transition from our previous goals to a fresh, five-year vision based on current needs.

As of December 31, 2025, the 2025 Community Health Assessment (CHA) and the 2026–2030 Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) are officially complete.
This wasn’t a project designed in a vacuum—it was powered by you. To the Essex County residents who shared your stories and filled out our surveys: thank you. Your lived experience is the foundation of this plan.

Below is the 2025 Community Health Survey Summary that 562 residents participated in.

Community Health Assessment, 2025

Click/tap through key pages of the report or download the full version below.

💡Tip – Click “controls” on the navigator bar below to magnify or search within the document.

Community Health Assessment, 2025

Looking for Up-to-Date data now?  

Here are 3 great resources to get you started:

Summary of Tobacco Patterns, Prevention, and Policy in Essex County, NY 2024

Healthy ADK is a project of the North Country’s Population Health Improvement Program, maintained by Adirondack Health Institute in collaboration with local agencies.  Data sets include health, economy, education, environment, government, public safety, social environment & transportation.

The NYS DOH Prevention Agenda Dashboard provides state and county level data based on the state’s Prevention Agenda including indicators for disparities, healthy & safe environment, chronic diseases, communicable diseases, women, infants & children and mental, emotional & behavioral health.

County Health Rankings is a resource allowing for health outcomes and factors reports for counties across the United States. It helps viewers understand how health is influenced by where we live, work, play and work.

For assistance using these sites or to request data, please contact Essex County Health Department at (518) 873-3500.

This Department, in collaboration with local hospitals and as part of a regional Community Health Assessment & Planning Committee, has been actively engaged in data collection and analysis during the 2022 year.

Data collection includes hundreds of indicators from numerous local, state and national data sources and looks at qualitative and quantitative data.

This Department, in collaboration with local hospitals and as part of a regional Community Health Assessment & Planning Committee, has been actively engaged in data collection and analysis during the 2022 year.

Data collection includes hundreds of indicators from numerous local, state and national data sources and looks at qualitative and quantitative data.

Community Health Assessment 2022

Priority Areas 2022 – 2024

Priority Areas & Status in Focus Areas:

RED
(Not Started)

YELLOW
(Partially Met)

BLUE
(Mostly Met)

GREEN
(Met)

Chronic Diseases

Focus Area

Intervention

Lead

Partner(s)

Status

Quality nutrition & physical activity in early learning & childcare centers

ECHD

K-12 Schools

Health Eating & Food Security

Physical activity & nutrition before, during, & after school

ECHD

K-12 Schools

Fruit & vegetable incentive programs

ECHD

K-12 Schools

Physical Activity

Community physical activity programs

ECHD

Media

Facilitate tobacco dependence treatment

NCHHN

Providers

Promote treatment of tobacco dependence

ECHD/AH

Media/CBO’s

Tobacco Prevention

Healthcare provider involvement in quit attempts

ECHD

Providers

Policy action to reduce tobacco marketing

CVFC

Students

Decrease availability of flavored tobacco products

CVFC

Businesses

Systems change for cancer screening reminders

AH

CBO’s

Preventative Care & Management

Remove barriers to cancer screening

UVMHN-ECH

Increase colorectal cancer screening

ECHD

Media

Priority Areas & Status in Focus Areas:

RED
(Not Started)

YELLOW
(Implementation)

BLUE
(Mostly Met)

GREEN
(Met)

Healthy Women, Infants & Children

Focus Area

Intervention

Lead

Partner(s)

Status

Maternal & Women’s Health

Preventive medical visits for women

UVMHN-ECH

Depression screening for pregnant & postpartum women

ECHD

Access to breastfeeding support

ECHD

Providers

Perinatal & Infant Health

Increase breastfeeding support

UVMHN-ECH

Capacity of home visiting programs

ECHD / Healthy Families North Country

Child & Adolescent Health

Family-centered services for supporting children with special healthcare needs

ECHD

Providers

Cross Cutting Healthy Women, Infants & Children

Collaboration with providers that serve women infants and children

ECHD

CBO & Providers

Priority Areas & Status in Focus Areas:

RED
(Not Started)

YELLOW
(Implementation)

BLUE
(Mostly Met)

GREEN
(Met)

Well-Being & Substance Use & Mental Health Disorders

Focus Area

Intervention

Lead

Partner(s)

Status

Evidence-based home visiting programs

ECHD

Media

Promote Well-Being

Promote inclusion, integration, and competence

UVMHN-ECH

Thoughtful messaging on mental illness & substance use

ECHD

Media

School-based prevention

The Prevention Team

K-12 Schools

SBIRT

UVMHN-ECH

Trauma informed approaches in prevention programs

ECMH

CBOs

Access to MOUD

UVMHN-ECH

Access to overdose reversal

Alliance for Positive Health

Pharmacies

Prevent Mental Health & Substance Use Disorders

Opioid Stewardship

UVMHN-ECH

Safe disposal for Rx drugs

AH

CBOs

Trauma informed approaches

ECHD

Providers

ACEs screening in primary care

UVMHN-ECH

Evidence-based home visiting programs

ECHD

Providers

Multi-level intervention model

ECMH

CVFC

Concurrent therapy for mental illness and nicotine addiction

ECMH

CVFC

The purpose of the Community Health Assessment (CHA) 2019 and Community Health Improvement/Service Plan (CHISP) 2019-2021 is to demonstrate an ongoing understanding of the significant health needs of Essex County residents and actions necessary to address these needs.

Significant attention was given to creating a report that is not only informative to the lead agencies engaged in the assessment, but one that is useful to a wide variety of individuals, groups, and organizations. This is because in order to improve the health of communities, the whole community must engaged. 

This report continues a long history of data gathering and analysis from a variety of sources including local, regional, state and national entities.  It includes primary and secondary data; as well as quantitative and qualitative data.  

Several components of this assessment are improvements from previous assessments.  The enhancements include:

  • Integration of input from local residents and community stakeholders;
  • Consideration of health by sub-population;
  • Identification of disparities in health by sub-population;
  • Examination of local social determinants of health; and
  • Identification of community assets that can be mobilized to improve the health of our community.

Additionally, higher levels of engagement were achieved through intervention planning efforts from previous assessments.  This includes:

  • Convening work groups to review health outcomes and contributing factors
  • Engaging partners to evaluate contributing factors to determine true root cause(s) that lead to poor health outcomes and disparate health indicators in certain communities, groups, locations;
  • Working to examine the existing assets/programs/initiatives; and
  • Collectively selecting the strategies that are most likely to result in measurable health gains; address the disparities identified; and be implemented successfully among partners.

We encourage residents, community leaders, organizational executives, and everyone interested to read this report about resident health including the community plan for addressing priority health needs.

Because of the size of this report, contents for web display are broken into Parts as downloadable below. Appendices are also available as downloadable documents; below.

ESSEX_CHA_CHISP_Cover-ContentsDownload

ESSEX_CHA_CHISP_Executive SummaryDownload

ESSEX_CHA_CHISP_Part I IntroductionDownload

ESSEX_CHA_CHISP_Part II CHADownload

ESSEX_CHA_CHISP_Part III CHISPDownload

ESSEX_CHA_CHISP_Part IV Dissemination PlanDownload

ESSEX_CHA_CHISP_Part V Appendices ListDownload

Appendix 1 ARHN Stakeholder Survey ReportDownload

Appendix 2 ARHN Essex County Health Indicators Data SheetsDownload

Appendix 3 ARHN Community Profile Data SheetsDownload

Appendix 4- Collaborative Committees ListDownload

Appendix 5 Distributed Focus Group Analysis ReportDownload

Appendix 6 Community Survey Analysis ReportDownload

Appendix 7 Stakeholder Survey Analysis ReportDownload

Appendix 8 Master Source ListDownload

Appendix 9 Prioritization MatrixDownload

Appendix 10 CHISP Work Plan.pdf(small)Download

Essex_Combined_CHIP CSP Progress Report 2018 FinalDownload

Essex_Combined_CHIP CSP Progress Report 2017

CHA-CHIP-CSP-ShortReport

CHA-CHIP-CSP-2016-ExecutiveSummary

Community Health Assessment 2016; Improvement & Service Plan 2016-2018

Appendix-A-DataConsultants-Sources-Methodology

Appendix-B-QualitativeData-StakeholdersSummary

Appendix-C-ARHN-CHA-Committee-Members-And-Meetings-Dates

Appendix-D-NYSDOH-Prevention-Agenda

Appendix-E-PrioritizationTool-Final-Essex-2016

Appendix-F-CSP-CHIP-Update-Summaries

Appendix-G-LocalCommunityServicePlan-Essex-2017

Appendix-H-Demographic-Data

Appendix-I-Educational-System-Profile

Appendix-J-Health-System-Data

Appendix-K-HealthIndicators

Appendix-L-AHI-PPS-Projects

Essex County CHA 2013 Final

Community Health Improvement Plan, 2014-2017 – Essex County CHIP 2013 Final.