Our Guiding Principles

The AZ Health Zone supports collaborative partnerships that work toward building resilient communities using the lens of health equity.

For the next five years the program looks to deepen the Policy, System, and Environmental (PSE) impact in communities using multi-level interventions. This will be achieved through the following foundational principles based on the program’s guiding framework:

1. Enhanced engagement in communities with limited resources for greater integration of programming and sustainability that meets their needs, strengths, and desires.
2. The adoption of trauma-aware principles at each level of the program to ensure that interventions are meeting individuals and families where they are at and avoiding harm.¹

Our Commitment as Evaluators

As evaluators, we bring a commitment to equity and inclusion in evaluations to our work.

One of our evaluation standards, or guiding principles, is Equity. This means that we strive to incorporate equity & trauma-informed principles into evaluation, engaging stakeholders in culturally relevant ways and at multiple levels whenever possible.

Some of our favorite resources are:

• Equitable Evaluation Initiative
• American Public Health Association Health Equity Resources
• National Equity Atlas
• Targeted Universalism
• Critical Dietetics Journal
• American Evaluation Association Initiatives
  • Graduate Education Diversity Internship
  • Minority Serving Institution Fellowship

Arizona’s Cultural Richness

In Arizona, we have tremendous cultural and demographic diversity.  The evaluations we oversee are designed to work in a wide variety of communities, and be responsive to Arizona social, cultural, and linguistic norms.

• Within and overlapping Arizona’s borders are 22 federally recognized tribal nations (Figure 1). 
• Thirty-one percent of Arizonans are Hispanic (90% of Mexican descent)²
• Four urban areas [Phoenix, Tucson, Flagstaff and Yuma] have populations >50,000 – the rest of Arizona is classified by varying degrees of rurality, from moderate-sized cities and towns to small towns with populations < 2,500 residents.³ 
• Arizona contains border communities, agricultural communities, communities of older adults (“snowbirds”) and a rich variety of religious and spiritual traditions.

Land Acknowledgement

The AZ Health Zone Evaluation Team acknowledges that the lands on which we evaluate are the ancestral homelands of indigenous peoples who have stewarded this land since time immemorial.  The University of Arizona is a borderlands university located on the territory of the Hohokam, the Tohono O’odham, and the Pascua Yaqui peoples. We recognize the historical injustices perpetrated on Indigenous people and that colonialism is still an ongoing process and are mindful of our participation. We honor and celebrate the cultures and contributions of the Indigenous people throughout the State of Arizona.⁵

References

1. Our Guiding Principles from the AZ Health Zone: https://www.azhealthzone.org/collaborators/about-us/guiding-principles
2. Our data on Hispanic population come from the Pew Research Center, 2014 population statistics by state. https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/states/state/az
3. Our data on Arizona rural population comes from https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/DataFiles/53180/25557_AZ.pdf?v=0
4. Our tribal homelands map comes from the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona: https://itcaonline.com/maps/
5. Our land acknowledgement statement is modified from this one written by the Community Gardens of Tucson organization: https://www.communitygardensoftucson.org/about/