One of the main things we heard when talking to community partners over the past few years was that siloed systems and organizations create inefficiencies and missed opportunities to improve community health.

Vitalyst supports collaboration and the breaking down of silos among community organizations working to improve health equity, especially in underserved communities. By bringing together partners, Vitalyst helps foster cross-sector integration and builds networks for health and well-being. Working with organizations at the grassroots and grass-tops level, we ensure the needs of the community are always front and center when programs and projects are considered and implemented.

Cover Arizona Coalition

Vitalyst continued its support of the Cover Arizona Coalition, contributing to 235,229 Arizonans enrolling in the Marketplace, representing an 18% year-over-year increase and the most successful Marketplace open enrollment period in history. We continued our support of the Cover Arizona Assister Trainings to ensure Arizonans accessing Healthcare Insurance Marketplace options were provided with the information needed to make informed choices. Using health disparity data, we worked with partners to create digital campaigns to drive targeted populations to the Cover Arizona website and 2-1-1 to receive health insurance information. As the Medicaid national emergency began to unwind and state Medicaid agencies like AHCCCS began to redetermine member eligibility, Vitalyst supported a coalition informing AHCCCS recipients of the requirements to re-confirm eligibility and reduce the number of people dis-enrolled. Disenrolled members were pointed to the Cover Arizona Coalition for insurance options.

Arizona Town Hall

Our work with Arizona Town Hall continued this year. Carrying on the 113th Arizona Town Hall topic of “Creating Vibrant Communities,” we conducted two community town halls: one focused on showcasing social services like the Eviction Helpline, and Double Up Food Bucks, a program that allows SNAP recipients to receive 2 for 1 fresh produce at farmers markets. We also worked with tribal partners to showcase how organizations across Arizona are incorporating the Elements of a Healthy Tribal Community into their work. The 114^th Arizona Town Hall topic, “Mental Illness, Substance Use, and Homelessness,” created opportunities for meaningful dialogue with community members with lived experience and decision-makers to come together and find common sense solutions to some of our community’s most pressing issues.

Arizona Food Systems Network

After working with Pinnacle Prevention to bring together local, state and regional food systems advocates to create the Arizona Food Systems Network in 2022 and launch the Arizona Statewide Food Action Plan, it was time to implement that plan. Pinnacle Prevention took the lead and convened five different workgroups working on various areas: Food Access and Distribution; Land and Water Access and Protection; Climate Smart Foodways; Agriculture Workforce Development; and the Tribal Food Sovereignty Workgroup. The network and workgroups provide a space for local groups and coalitions to come together and identify challenges and work toward solutions using data and leveraging the collective power of its members.

Civic Health

Reforming systems that create barriers to civic engagement takes collective work. We worked with partners like Instituto to launch its “Building for the Future” project, a three-part effort to inform the specific needs of Arizona nonprofits working to increase civic engagement in the most underrepresented groups. The three strategies from Instituto’s project include research; seed funding; and technical assistance. Our work with One Arizona supported their efforts to document the redistricting work with community participants and augment 2022 coalition goals to increase participation in the 2022 election.

Housing

Vitalyst’s work in housing deepened this year through various partnerships. Our work with school districts and developers continued to create toolkits for other school districts to use when and if they can provide land to build community-centric housing and services. Always looking for innovative solutions, Vitalyst and partners are building a cohort of local churches that want to develop workforce housing with supportive services.