From 2010 to early 2013, under the leadership of the Pima County Health Department, organizations and community members engaged in a comprehensive community health assessment and improvement planning process. The goal of this intensive, community-driven process was to examine the current health needs of Pima County residents and determine how to best address them.

This report is a summary of the Pima County Community Health Assessment that was conducted in 2011. As facilitator, the Pima County Health Department examined existing data describing the community, surveyed residents and stakeholders about their perceptions of the health status of Pima County, and presented these findings to the Community Health Assessment Taskforce. The community members who comprised the taskforce evaluated the information and identified five priorities that would make a significant positive impact on the health status of Pima County residents.

Assessing and addressing the public’s changing needs is a challenging task. The Health Department uses a variety of measures to evaluate program accomplishments while holding itself accountable to the taxpayers. The economic challenges faced by the County and its residents require the Department to rely more on quality improvement approaches to maximize the limited resources. Here are some highlights of the Health Department’s achievements in efficiently providing needed public health services.

From 2010 to early 2013, under the leadership of the Pima County Health Department, organizations and community members engaged in a comprehensive community health assessment and improvement planning process. The goal of this intensive, community-driven process was to examine the current health needs of Pima County residents and determine how to best address them. This document is an update of the Healthy Pima Initiative.

A series of 51 individual “stakeholder” interviews and two focus groups conducted with members of the Pima County business community in fall, 2001, documented significantly divided opinion about the likely economic impacts of the county’s Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan (SDCP). The results of the stakeholder inquiries were striking. Only one major finding reflected consensus, while several others revealed sharp differences of opinion in the business community about the potential economic impacts of the SDCP and associated initiatives.

Afterschool youth-development programs (AYDs) have grown significantly during the past 15 years in Arizona and nationally. Many providers have moved beyond simply providing a safe haven to actively promoting young people’s development. However, there is still tremendous opportunity for growth. There is also a continuing need to enhance coordination and collaboration among programs in order to extend their resources and heighten their impact.

Morrison Institute worked with AzCASE and VSUW to construct a 55-question survey using Qualtrics on-line software. While the term “afterschool” was used, the survey was designed to measure all types of out-of-school programs, regardless of whether they operate before or after school, on weekends, or during school and summer breaks. Approximately 1,800 questionnaires were distributed to individual program sites in Maricopa and Pima counties via a list provided by AzCASE. Though the survey did not utilize a random sample, its 38 percent response rate (681 returns) suggests that its findings can help educators, youth-development professionals, policymakers and the business community understand the scope, characteristics and needs of afterschool services in Arizona’s two largest population centers.

In February of 1998, the Pima County Board of Supervisors launched what has evolved into the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan (SDCP) -- a comprehensive effort to protect the Sonoran Desert, guide growth and rationalize land development in the metropolitan Tucson region. Proponents of this planning process maintained that the project would reconcile conflicts between human activities and conservation, providing benefits for both wildlife and economic development. Critics, however, have increasingly alleged that implementing such an initiative will adversely affect land and housing markets, increase taxes and create problems of housing affordability. Over time a pressing need has consequently grown for objective information about the possible fiscal and economic impacts of the conservation programs being assembled by Pima County. This report addresses that need. It is a tool in the form of an impartial framework for assessment that government officials, environmentalists, business people and the general public can use for debate and decision-making.