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Q&A
OCME's role in the Healthy NYC initiative
4:10:34
ยท
3 min
Council Member Lynn Schulman inquires about the Office of Chief Medical Examiner's (OCME) role in the Healthy NYC initiative, which aims to increase life expectancy in the city. Dr. Jason Graham, Chief Medical Examiner, explains OCME's contributions to the initiative.
- OCME provides critical data through death certificates, informing policy and programmatic changes
- The office conducts outreach to families of drug overdose victims, connecting them to care and services
- OCME's molecular genetics laboratory and genetic counselor reach out to families at risk of hereditary health issues
Lynn Schulman
4:10:34
Healthy NYC is an initiative which is primarily led by DOHMH with the goal of increasing life expectancy rates in the city over the next five years.
4:10:43
The program includes the investigation of mortality trends in the city to attempt to determine the reasons why the life expectancy rate has decreased in recent years.
4:10:52
What role does OCME play with healthy NYC?
Jason Graham
4:10:56
Well, I think we have several important roles.
4:11:00
I think the one of the most important has to do with being a source of critically important data.
4:11:08
Our death certificates provide data that inform all of our stakeholder partners on both the criminal justice and the public health side, including not just violent deaths, homicides, suicides, accidents, but also the number of sudden unexpected natural deaths that we investigate and that we determine the cause of death for.
4:11:34
Providing disease and injury epidemiologic data on things, not only those violent deaths, but also heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, undiagnosed cancers.
4:11:48
All of those are elements that via our death certificates inform policy and programmatic changes that will ladder up to the ultimate goal of healthy NYC and the reduction of mortality and the extension of our life expectancy as a city.
4:12:09
Aside from being a critical data source, another critical area that we have been very active with is outreach to families, particularly around drug overdose deaths.
4:12:22
And our drug intelligence and intervention group engages social workers to actively perform outreach to family members who have lost someone to a drug overdose and connect them to care and services, up to and including substance use support and healthcare services that may be potentially life saving.
4:12:43
And so I feel like that this is very direct primary care prevention work in addition to serving as a source of data.
4:12:51
And another area that is, I think, very innovative in a way that we are again going beyond the traditional role of the medical examiner's office in active life saving prevention work is around our molecular genetics laboratory.
4:13:06
And we have a full time genetic counselor who when someone dies suddenly or unexpectedly due to a genetic cause, we have a genetic counselor that reaches out to that family who may be at risk of losing someone else to that same genetic or hereditary problem.
4:13:22
And having a conversation with them and connecting them to care potentially, that can be lifesaving.
4:13:29
And so I think in many facets the work of the OCME, and as I've said before, everything we do is for the living.
4:13:38
And we take that very much to heart.