UA Cooperative Extension Statewide Needs Assessment
University of Arizona Extension (UACE) undertook a statewide needs assessment process in Fall 2022, led by the Community Research, Evaluation, and Development (CRED) team. The purpose of the needs assessment was to understand community needs and assets across the state as a basis for examining and prioritizing Extension activities to maximize our impact now and into the future.
View demographic reports at the state- and county-levels.
Static weekly reports:
The CRED team have been analyzing the needs assessment survey data and creating different products to serve internal and external informational needs.
Products, available on this Statewide Needs Assessment webpage, include:
- Interactive dashboard looks at the results by different filters including sociodemographics, knowledge of and experience with Extension, and how much respondents said they knew about content areas. Get access to the dashboard here.
- Statewide report, including statewide results and in-depth demographics comparing survey respondents with the general population of Arizona
- County one-pagers summarizing the number of respondents and the priority needs identified in each county. These are available in both English and Spanish.
- Full county reports, including additional results for all items within each topical area and survey respondent demographics. These will be paired with county-based secondary data profiles with a comprehensive selection of indicators describing the population, economics, health, education, agriculture, and natural environment in each county.
Bureau of Tobacco and Chronic Disease Community Partner Concept Mapping Project
The goal of the this project was to develop an evaluation framework for Arizona Department of Health Services Bureau of Tobacco and Chronic Disease Community Partners that could guide efforts to determine effectiveness and promote sustainability of Arizona’s community-based tobacco control and chronic disease management programs. In order to accomplish this, we used a concept mapping process which provides a structured way to incorporate input across stakeholders to develop a visual representation of relationships among ideas. This document outlines the concept mapping process which produced products (concept maps, pattern matches and go-zones) that were interpreted through meetings with multiple groups of stakeholders. The findings and a resultant logic model were discussed in a subsequent larger group meeting, where further directions for program planning and evaluation were identified.
4-H Healthy Habits White Paper
National 4-H Council, through support from the Walmart Foundation, invested significant resources in increasing participation from Native American, Hispanic, Latino, and African American youth and their families in 4-H Healthy Living programs. CRED was funded to collect, assess, and report evidence-informed best practices in these nutrition education programs, focusing especially on practices supporting participation from Native American, Hispanic, Latino, African American, and rural youth and adults.
Arizona Extension Rangeland Monitoring Evaluation Report
This project is an evaluation of the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension Rangeland Monitoring Programs. Using interviews, focus groups, and surveys, the CRED team examined attitudes and behaviors of ranchers and federal agency staff toward rangeland monitoring, and also examined the working relationships between the ranchers and the agencies. The work included all three Extension monitoring programs: the Arizona Cooperative Rangeland Monitoring Program, the Southeastern Arizona Rangeland Monitoring Program, and Reading the Range. The ranchers, mostly cattle growers, were located across the state, including central Arizona, southeast Arizona, and Mohave County. The agency staff represented both the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service.
Unpacking Rurality: Evaluating the impact of rural community characteristics and the built environment on SNAP participation
Much of the current study of the challenges in health, nutrition, and food security faced by people in rural areas fails to consider the often substantial differences in needs and barriers across rural communities. In this project, CRED analyzed social, economic, and geographic community features to attempt to characterize rural areas in Arizona. Innovative geospatial and other multivariate statistical analyses were used to examine how these rural typologies are related to variation in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation and health outcomes.
UArizona SNAP-Ed Interactive Maps
CRED worked with SNAP-Ed teams in 12 Arizona counties to create and train staff in the use of interactive maps (geovisualizations) for each county so that local staff and agents could better understand the needs and resources in their communities and use this knowledge to inform their program planning.
Regional Needs and Assets Report - 2018 - Navajo Nation
The Arizona Early Childhood Health and Development Board, known as First Things First (FTF), divides the state into 28 locally-governed regions which are allocated funds based primarily on the population of children birth to five in the area, with discretionary funds available to areas with greatest needs. The CRED team has worked with FTF both at the state and regional levels since 2009. This work includes statewide early childhood biennial needs assessments which provide a snapshot of the status of young children in Arizona based on a variety of health, economic and educational data. In addition, the team has conducted biennial community-level early childhood needs and assets assessments, producing reports for 19 of the 28 FTF regions, including nine tribal regions, in the last report cycle. These reports assist the local governance body of each region in making strategic decisions about which early childhood services to fund in their communities. The 2018 report for the Navajo Nation is linked here as an example; all are available at: https://www.firstthingsfirst.org/
Community Fact Sheets
Example: Coolidge Fact Sheet
CRED created single-page (double-sided) infographic community fact sheets on access to healthy food and physical activity a story to tell for over 100 communities across Arizona. The objective of this project was to provide resources to local agencies to assist in planning local-level initiatives and engaging decision-makers through providing accessible and actionable data in the form of community fact sheets.
Cumulative Cost-Benefit Analysis of Pima County’s Drug Treatment Alternative to Prison (DTAP) Program
The Pima County Drug Treatment Alternative to Prison program (DTAP) provides residential and intensive out-patient drug treatment and recovery support services as an alternative to prison for selected eligible drug offenders. This report contains an assessment of the net benefit to the Arizona criminal justice system associated with the DTAP program.