ADHS Awards First Round of Justice Reinvestment Grants to Arizona Nonprofits

The Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS) was charged with creating the Justice Reinvestment Program through the passage of Prop 207 in November 2020. The proposition legalized recreational marijuana use for adults 21 and older as well as created initiatives to increase safety and community resilience around arrest and incarceration, including the Justice Reinvestment Program.

The Justice Reinvestment Program is administered by the ADHS Office of Health Equity, which uses a community-centered, data-driven approach to running the program.

The Office started by completing a statewide data and funding landscape analysis to determine which local communities were most impacted by drug enforcement, arrest, and incarceration. The analysis identified priority communities across the state, where 18 listening sessions were held. Listening session participants expressed the following services would be beneficial for their communities:

Neighborhood safety and community gathering infrastructure (such as parks, community centers, etc.)
Cultural awareness training
Accessible options for healthy food
Affordable and accessible housing
Stigma reduction and culturally appropriate health services
Technology re-training for people who have been formerly incarcerated
Positive youth development
Substance use education and prevention

For a comprehensive list of suggestions, read the listening session and data landscape analysis summaries.

The Office of Health Equity then released a competitive grant application open to qualified Arizona nonprofits to support Justice Reinvestment programming this year. The awarded projects address all of the key focus areas outlined in the statute and in the community listening sessions and represent communities from across the state of Arizona. ADHS is proud to announce the following grant awardees:

Northland Family Help Center
Hushabye Nursery
Axiom Community of Recovery
Cihuapactli Collective
Stuck Community Acupuncture, Inc
Phoenix Indian Center
Arouet Foundation
Friendly House
Jobs for Arizona’s Graduates (JAG)
Persevere
Constructing Circles of Peace
Regional Center for Border Health, Inc. – Yuma
Regional Center for Border Health, Inc. – Parker
Arizona Democracy Resource Center
Southern Arizona Legal Aid, Inc.
The Bambi Fund
Just Communities Arizona
Our Sister Our Brother

Moving forward, the Office of Health Equity will develop a robust program evaluation process to ensure that funded projects serve the intended communities and create a positive impact. The program evaluation will assess if awardees meet their determined goals and the data collected will be used in efforts to continuously improve the program. The Office will also facilitate a Community of Practice for all awardees and interested stakeholders to share best practices, lessons learned and build partnerships to support the communities served.

Additional Justice Reinvestment funding will be made available in the near future. Previous and new applicants are encouraged to apply. Visit the ADHS Office of Health Equity’s Justice Reinvestment Program page for updates.

By Chavon Woods|2023-12-21T11:49:07-07:00December 21st, 2023|General|Comments Off

About the Author: Chavon Woods

Chavon Woods is an Arizona Native with 18 years of public service, primarily in public health. She currently serves as the Health Equity Administrator for the Office of Health Equity at ADHS where she supports initiatives across the agency to strengthen the internal capacity to operationalize health equity best practices. She also supports her team on several federal grant initiatives including vaccine equity, COVID-19 testing, public health infrastructure, school health, health disparities and AZ Proposition 207 Justice Reinvestment, marijuana expungement, education, and outreach. Prior to her role with the ADHS, Ms. Woods served 13 years at the Maricopa County Department of Public Health in several capacities. Ms. Woods holds a master’s degree in public administration with an emphasis in government policy from Grand Canyon University.