More than 14,000 people participated in a Maricopa County Department of Public Health survey on the impacts of COVID-19 and other pandemic concerns.

Some of those results are now being used to create better COVID-19-related resource outreach.

One of the topics the survey tackled was vaccine hesitancy. Lilliana Cardenas with the county’s Office of Community Empowerment says what they learned from the survey, to mitigate hesitancy, is to have clinicians at vaccine sites to answer questions.

“People just need to talk it out sometimes. And having the opportunity to have that direct connection with someone who's going to validate your concerns and answer them, and not just necessarily give you kind of the standard information that’s being pushed out everywhere, for a lot of people that really does ease them and gives them that boost of confidence they needed to move forward," Cardenas said.

Cardenas says she hopes the survey results can be used by organizations, politicians and other decision-makers in order to make informed plans. Those results are shared on an interactive website, which puts the survey’s open-ended answers front and center.

Cardenas also hopes this website may help show community members that they are not alone. 

“People are still getting sick and people are still dealing with a lot of the repercussions of everything that's happened over the last two and a half years. So we still want to encourage people to share their stories,” Cardenas said.

More COVID-19 impact reports are available at maricopa.gov/5100/Health-Data-Maricopa-Health-Matters.

Arizona coronavirus cases, deaths