Maricopa County Community Testing Program

About the Program

Category: Health (Best in Category)

Year: 2021

During the summer of 2020, Arizona emerged as a global hotspot of new COVID-19 infections with staggering positivity rates. A lack of available COVID-19 testing left many Arizona residents scrambling to find available testing locations. Convenient testing locations were difficult to find, and this issue was even more pronounced in vulnerable populations such as monolingual Spanish speakers, those without access to transportation, persons experiencing homelessness, and individuals with disabilities. The Community Testing (CT) Program was set up to provide free COVID-19 testing to underserved communities, prioritizing communities with the highest percent positivity rate without access to testing. CT partnered with a network of healthcare providers and other community-based organizations to make testing accessible for anyone who needed it. To move as one coordinated effort in partnership with 17 community-based organizations required significant operational investment to create streamlined processes. Overall, the program was responsible for testing 13,656 people through 185 events, in 69 total zip codes. As the program continues serving residents of Maricopa County, these numbers are the latest as of 1/28/2021.