NYU - CUNY Prevention Research Center

Earth Day is often framed around environmental awareness. It also offers a lens into how environmental conditions shape health.

Prevention research shows that the built environment plays a measurable role in chronic disease risk. Factors such as access to safe parks, walkability, and neighborhood conditions influence physical activity, stress, and overall well being.

A recent study on park renovations in New York City found that improvements in park quality were associated with increased use and changes in perceived stress among residents. Findings like these help illustrate how changes to local environments can influence health behaviors and outcomes at the population level.

At the NYU CUNY Prevention Research Center, research contributes to understanding how environmental conditions intersect with prevention. This includes examining how community spaces and neighborhood resources can support healthier daily routines.

Prevention does not happen in isolation. It is shaped by the environments people move through every day.

What determines whether someone participates in preventive screening?

Research across NYU-CUNY PRC’s projects consistently shows that screening uptake is shaped by more than individual awareness. Participation is influenced by structural barriers such as access to primary care, insurance status, referral coordination, and language concordance, alongside behavioral factors like perceived risk, trust, and prior experiences with the health system.

PRC’s core and special interest projects focus on strengthening community–clinical linkages to address these overlapping influences. Rather than assuming that education alone increases screening rates, the Center’s work emphasizes coordinated referral pathways, culturally responsive engagement, and follow-up systems that support continuity of care.

This systems approach reflects an important principle in prevention science: improving screening participation requires aligning community outreach, clinical workflows, and accountability mechanisms. When those elements function together, preventive services become more accessible and more likely to be completed.

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Prevention research in New York City operates within one of the most complex public health environments in the country.

The city’s density, linguistic and cultural diversity, and layered health system structure shape how prevention must be designed. Care is delivered across public hospitals, private systems, federally qualified health centers, municipal agencies, and community-based organizations. Residents often navigate multiple systems at once.

In this context, prevention cannot be siloed. It must account for:

• High population mobility and neighborhood-level variation
• Diverse cultural norms and health beliefs
• Differences in insurance coverage and access pathways
• Coordination challenges across clinical and community settings

The NYU-CUNY Prevention Research Center operates within this ecosystem by designing and evaluating community–clinical linkage models that reflect these realities. Rather than treating NYC as a uniform setting, PRC research adapts to local variation and tests strategies that can function within complex urban systems.

Prevention in New York City requires infrastructure thinking, sustained partnerships, and careful alignment with existing service networks. PRC’s work is structured around those principles.

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Prevention does not happen in isolation. It unfolds across clinics, community organizations, public systems, and the daily lives of individuals. That complexity is one reason single-intervention solutions often struggle to last or scale.

At the NYU-CUNY Prevention Research Center, systems and implementation science are used to design prevention research that reflects this reality. Rather than testing interventions in controlled settings alone, the PRC examines how programs interact with existing workflows, policies, community resources, and social conditions.

This approach helps identify where breakdowns occur, what needs to be adapted, and how prevention strategies can remain effective over time. It also supports stronger community–clinical linkages by ensuring that interventions align with how care and support are actually delivered.

By accounting for complexity upfront, the PRC builds prevention models that are more adaptable, sustainable, and relevant beyond a single study.

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Cancer prevention does not end with diagnosis or treatment. Survivorship has become a critical part of the cancer prevention and control landscape, shaped by long-term symptom management, behavioral health, and the need to reduce secondary risks.

As part of the Cancer Prevention and Control Research Network (CPCRN), the NYU-CUNY Prevention Research Center contributes to national efforts that translate survivorship research into community settings. This work emphasizes culturally relevant strategies, access to supportive care, and the everyday factors that influence long-term well-being for cancer survivors.

By focusing on how evidence-based survivorship approaches can be adapted for diverse populations, CPCRN helps extend prevention beyond the clinic and into the environments where people live, recover, and rebuild daily life.

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Where does diabetes education happen?

Looking back at the National Diabetes Education Week, we’re reflecting on what makes education effective, and accessible.

At NYU-CUNY PRC, our programs use community health workers and culturally tailored tools to deliver diabetes prevention where it’s needed most. That includes visual flipcharts, mobile apps, and peer-led conversations, all designed for daily realities, not ideal conditions.

Education is not just about delivering information. It’s about building trust, meeting people in context, and supporting the choices that shape long-term health.

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October 15 is National Latino AIDS Awareness Day, a reminder of the continued need for prevention, education, and equitable access to care.

Latina/Latinx immigrant communities often face overlapping barriers to health care, including language access, insurance coverage, etc.

These challenges affect not only HIV/AIDS outcomes, but prevention and screening for chronic conditions as well.

At NYU-CUNY PRC, our work addresses these broader disparities. Projects like INSPIRE, HHAP, and HJN are designed for communities where access to care is shaped by immigration status, income, and lived experience.

The lessons from HIV prevention, build trust, meet people where they are, and reduce barriers, apply across the spectrum of public health.

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The 2025 theme for World Mental Health Day is:
Access to Services, Mental Health in Catastrophes and Emergencies

At NYU-CUNY PRC, we focus on the systems that shape access long before and long after crisis.

That includes work with community health workers, culturally tailored education, and tools that help people navigate prevention and care. For many communities, mental health access depends on more than having a service available; it depends on whether that service is usable, trustworthy, and delivered with understanding.

In public health, prevention includes building the conditions that allow mental health support to reach everyone, especially during moments of disruption.

Follow NYU-CUNY PRC for more updates on how prevention research is shaping public health.

Diabetes management comes with unique challenges in immigrant communities, including language and cultural barriers.

NYU-CUNY PRC researchers Nadia Islam, Lorna Thorpe, and Terry Huang are tackling these obstacles through a diabetes self-management program that promotes health equity.

Interested to dive deeper into our initiatives? Visit: https://ow.ly/cYK750TXGvr

Improving indoor air quality might help lower health risks for those with hypertension.

NYU-CUNY PRC researchers found that portable air cleaners could positively impact blood pressure in adults living in NYC public housing.

This work highlights the role of air quality in chronic disease prevention - and if you’re interested to learn more, visit: https://ow.ly/hoEM50TXGr8