Practice Title: Leveraging granular data to improve COVID-19 vaccination coverage in Pima County, Arizona
Department: Pima County Health Department
Size: Small (Population of 0-50,000 people)
State: Arizona
Summary of Practice:
The Pima County Health Department (PCHD) is located in Tucson, Arizona and is comprised of ~ 300 employees. PCHD serves 1,050,000 Pima County residents, 36.8% of which identify as Hispanic or Latinx. Pima County’s extensive international border with Mexico means that PCHD plays a significant role in addressing the health needs of migrants and asylum seekers, and is home to over 15,000 refugees. In addition, PCHD collaborates with two tribal nations - the Pasqua Yacui and Tohono O’odham. Pima County residents have a median income of $47,560 USD/annual. Since the beginning of the pandemic, PCHD has prioritized equity in its response - channeling resources to populations most impacted; seeking to alleviate financial, language, and cultural barriers; and using data to use limited resources as efficiently as possible. To this end, PCHD has partnered with Partners in Health and Surgo Ventures, to create a census-tract level dashboard to identify and respond to hyperlocal inequities in COVID-19 vaccine coverage, and identify communities with characteristics that leave them particularly vulnerable to the impacts of COVID-19.
Not all communities will face the same challenges in scaling COVID-19 rollout to achieve high vaccination coverage. The dashboard integrates Pima County vaccination and case data, Surgo COVID-19 data tools on community vulnerability and level of concern for barriers to vaccine uptake, and vaccine hesitancy survey data on the types of people who are less likely to get the vaccine based on individual barriers and beliefs. Tracts requiring action are prioritized based on the level of vaccine coverage, vulnerability to pandemic outcomes, and current hotspot risk based on COVID-19 cases. The dashboard also characterizes the individual and contextual factors associated with poor COVID-19 vaccine uptake to better assist PCHD programs in developing targeted recommendations and outreach in Pima County.
The overall goal of the dashboard was to improve the precision and efficiency of PCHD’s equity-focused vaccine efforts. This was done through identifying census tracts with low vaccination coverage, prioritizing those most vulnerable to COVID-19 impacts and/or current hotspots, contextualizing the underlying supply-and-demand side challenges possibly driving low uptake in these communities, and using insights to design and evaluate locally appropriate vaccination strategies. The dashboard and vaccine hesitancy survey were designed and implemented in consultation with the Pima Community Advisory Committee, and local community based organizations, including the Arizona Public Interest Research Group and the Arizona Center for Empowerment. The vaccine hesitancy survey was implemented from November 2021 - January 2022 (currently in the field as of this submission).
The dashboard adds value in informing a precision response to inequitable vaccination coverage by leveraging Surgo Ventures tools - the Surgo Ventures COVID-19 Community Vulnerability Index (CCVI), COVID-19 Vaccine Coverage Index (CVAC), and the COVID-19 Vaccine Personas tool. Fighting the COVID-19 pandemic calls for precision— understanding which communities are in most need of support and why. This dashboard is a sustainable tool that will continue to inform COVID-19 vaccination strategies and has potential to scale to identify and respond to inequities in other disease areas.
Leveraging granular data to improve COVID-19 vaccination coverage in Pima County, Arizona
Category
Epidemiology