Pima County has been awarded a $6.5 million grant to help reduce health disparities that have become more obvious during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A public-health crisis was declared last December in Pima County and the grant is intended to address medical care inequities, particularly for people of color and racial minorities, said Dr. Theresa Cullen, the county’s health director.
“We know that disparities, while they were revealed by COVID-19, have persisted and not been created by COVID-19,” Cullen said. While the grant highlights racial and ethnic inequalities, Cullen said the department also plans to address overall socio-economic disparities as well.
The grant is part of a national initiative through the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that was set up to help historically high-risk and underserved communities, as well as rural areas.
The CDC has provided grants for the same purpose to every state, including Arizona, as well as other counties or cities with a population of over 2 million. The funding will continue until June 30, 2023.
Arizona has also allotted some of its CDC funding to the University of Arizona’s Center for Rural Health in order to reduce COVID-19-related health risks in Pima County’s rural populations, according to Cullen.
There are four parts to the county Health Department’s plans for the money, according to Anthony Gimino, a spokesman for the county’s community services team. These include providing at-home COVID-19 tests, developing new demographic data collection techniques, creating new positions and practices to serve more at-risk populations, and working with health partners and local organizations to engage community members.
The first aspect, developing at-home COVID-19 tests, includes the county’s plan to distribute 1,500 self-administered COVID-19 tests to populations most at-risk of complications due to the disease. Pima County also plans to increase mobile testing “to include engaging high-risk populations where people live, work, worship, and play.”
The second, improved use of data on health inequities, will involve standardizing data collection and recording processes to produce “clear and actionable information on health disparities.”
“Very few public-health departments have been strong in public-health data, so this is going to help us do that,” Cullen said.
The third part of the county’s plan involves hiring more community health workers and public health nurses, with a total of 20 new positions created..
The final part of the county’s initiative involves working with and supporting “grassroot groups disproportionately impacted by COVID-19,” according to the initiative overview. This includes a total of $925,000 in grants divided between several regions of Pima County.
While the grant is meant to specifically address disparities connected to health care for COVID-19, Cullen said the county will use that money to address not only COVID-19 cases directly but also focus on treating conditions that make one more at risk for complications due to the virus. She said that’s where the new community health worker positions will come in.
“We want them to do really wraparound services,” Cullen said.
Cullen said one of the “major goals” of her department is prevention and protecting those who may be at risk if the pandemic were to have another deadly wave.
“Our goal would be to increase the safety of those communities,” she said, “and we would use what we know from the pandemic to identify those communities.”
