UB Researchers to Conduct Health Survey Involving 700 Households On Buffalo's Lower West Side

BUFFALO, N.Y -- A team of University at Buffalo researchers will undertake the first comprehensive health survey of Buffalo’s Lower West Side beginning Feb. 6, aided by a $75,000 grant to UB and Columbus Hospital from the Margaret E. Wendt Foundation.

The grant allows UB to expand a small pilot study conducted last summer in the same area of the city under the leadership of Carlos Roberto Jaén, M.D., UB assistant professor of family medicine and social and preventive medicine. Jaén also will direct the larger survey.

For the new study, bilingual interviewers will visit 700 selected households, which will provide a scientific sample representing a total population of about 20,000 people. Households will be selected from within five census tracts in an area bounded by Albany Street, Fargo Avenue, North Street, Main Street, Niagara Street, Porter Avenue and the Niagara River.

The survey will assess a wide variety of health-related conditions and experiences, including social and physical activities, frequency of women’s health screening, availability of health care and problems of access, experiences with crime, and amount of health services needed to deal with the area’s incidence of substance abuse, HIV infection and mental-health problems.

Jaén said the population used in this survey could become the basis for multiple studies in the future. Results will be available to the public in about six months after completion of the six-week survey.

Interviewers will work out of a base station at Columbus Hospital and will carry UB identification cards. As a side benefit of participation, anyone taking part in the survey will have access to a social worker at Columbus Hospital for one year after the survey is completed.

"We urge all households selected to be surveyed to help our researchers with this project," said Jaén. "The information we gather will bring better health care to them, their families and their neighbors."