Advocacy
By Maddy Bynes , PCOA Director of Public Policy & Special Projects Community Needs Assessment Every four years, PCOA works diligently to assess our community’s needs through our community needs assessment surveys, focus groups, and listening sessions. PCOA last engaged in a community needs assessment in 2016 and findings from the assessment were reported in PCOA’s A Report to the Community, which can be found at pcoa.org. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, PCOA worked to informally assess community need in 2020 and 2021, though a formal needs assessment was put on hold to focus resources and energy towards providing services most in need at the time. Many needs have changed since 2016 and many have even changed since we informally assessed during the pandemic. That’s why we need your help now! Please visit needs.pcoa.org and take our community needs assessment survey. This survey is available to anyone 50 years of age and older and the data collected will better help to inform our advocacy strategies moving forward.
PCOA Wins First Place National Aging Innovation Award!
PCOA’s Take YOUR Shot COVID-19 vaccine campaign tied for first place out of 43 programs across the nation and is the highest programmatic award an organization can receive from USAging. PCOA’s multi-pronged approach to vaccinations include investing in broad- based marketing and community organizing techniques to spread reliable and factual information about the COVID-19 vaccine to all age groups. PCOA’s partners on this project included the Arizona Center for Empowerment, Pima County Health Department, Community Foundation for Southern Arizona, the United Way of Tucson and Southern Arizona, and Tucson Electric Power Company to fund and build a community organizing approach to vaccinations. The team knocked on over 100,000 doors and made over 75,000 phone encouraging Pima County residents to take their shot. PCOA continues to actively promote COVID-19 vaccinations to the community and most recently began working to assess changes in community need due to the pandemic with valuable funding from the Vitalyst Health Foundation. PCOA also engaged in an intergenerational media campaign using print, TV, radio, and social media – including TikTok and Instagram – to engage audiences in finding and getting their COVID-19 vaccinations. Through these efforts, PCOA had over 1,000,000 impressions on TikTok videos, targeting
younger generations, and nearly 10,000 hits to their COVID-19 informational website. Much of the funding for these efforts were provided through COVID-19 stimulus funds from the federal government, in partnership with the Arizona Department of Economic Security. We are so honored to receive both the Aging Innovation and Aging Achievement Award from USAging this year and we are humbled to have received the first-place award for the Take YOUR Shot Campaign. We couldn’t have done it without the tremendous support of community partnership and community engagement. Mary Ann Spanos, President of USAging, Maddy Bynes, Director of Public Policy & Special Projects for PCOA, W. Mark Clark, President & CEO for PCOA, and iN2L representative gather for awards photo
Scan the QR code above to access the community needs assessment survey.
September 2022, Never Too Late | Page 25
Pima Council on Aging
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