The 2025 edition of the Coachella Valley Community Health Survey, which details comprehensive and critical data of valley residents to identify health needs and support policy-making, revealed mental health concerns, increase in food insecurity and analyzed health behaviors.
Conducted by Health Assessment and Research for Communities, the data was collected from March 2025 through August 2025 by random sampling of address-based mailing participation recruitment flyers to 23,000 households from Desert Hot Springs to the eastern border of Riverside County on the Salton Sea. When collecting data, certain cities were underrepresented, which include Indio, Palm Desert and La Quinta.
The survey analyzes data to represent individuals 18 years and older and children ages zero to five. The report uses adult socioeconomic status, including household income, education level and type of employment, and results indicated that more than a quarter of Coachella Valley adults are living at or below the federal poverty line.
“Perhaps the most concerning finding from the 2025 survey was the dramatic uptick in food insecurity,” the report stated.
Due to lack of funds, food insecurity has significantly jumped since 2022 for children and adults. About one in four adults have reported cutting meal sizes or skipping meals because of not having enough money, while one in 10 adults have went an entire day without eating. More than 3,000 children went without food for an entire day.
In 2022, 9.7% of adults faced food insecurity compared to 25.2% last year, which has been the highest percentage number it has been in over a decade. Roughly 40% of adults have reported last year that they have spent less money on food to prioritize on other basic needs.
While majority of valley residents have health insurance, urgent care centers have remained a common source of care due to the convenience. A barrier most adults face in their access to health care has been meeting with healthcare providers. One in three residents struggle with the hours that healthcare providers have and the length of time it takes to get an appointment, according to the survey.
Another aspect of healthcare involve mental healthcare services, in which more than one in four adults and one in five children have been diagnosed with a mental health condition but there may be more residents who may not be formally diagnosed. “More than 26,000 adults needed mental healthcare in the past year and could not get it,” the report stated.
Many challenges people faced when attempting to receive mental healthcare encountered costs, long waitlists, limited provider availability and transportation issues.
The survey suggests that possible effective approaches to improving mental health support could include expanding school-based services, using telehealth where available and community-wide work to reduce stigma.
Coachella Valley adults make up of significantly older adults than any in Riverside County and California as a whole. 21.9% of adults in the region are 70 years or older compared to 15% in Riverside County and 14$ in California.
The nonprofit’s survey serves as essential information to the progress of public health and for community members, officials said.