During November, Arizonans who had received the updated Omicron booster were 14 times less likely than unvaccinated individuals to be hospitalized from COVID-19 and 49 times less likely to die from COVID-19. That’s according to our latest monthly look at COVID-19 outcomes by vaccination status. Those who were vaccinated, but hadn't gotten the updated booster [...]
Nearly 200,000 Arizonans have received new COVID-19 boosters designed to guard against current Omicron subvariants that have dominated around the country. Even with millions in our state fully vaccinated, that number needs to be much, much higher to protect our most vulnerable against severe outcomes. There has been considerable news coverage nationally about lower-than-hoped-for uptake [...]
For months, our report detailing COVID-19 outcomes by vaccination status has provided a telling look at the benefits of getting vaccinated. Now we've updated this monthly report to look at outcomes for those who are up-to-date for all recommended COVID-19 vaccinations, including recommended booster doses, and those who have received at least one COVID-19 vaccination [...]
Objective evaluation is critical to assessing and improving the performance of any public health system- including the behavioral health system that we manage. One of the ways we assess our behavioral health system is to conduct a “Quality Services Review”, which identifies strengths, service capacity gaps, and areas for improvement at a system-wide level. A [...]
We recently held a series of focus groups and interviews to obtain input from persons with Serious Mental Illnesses (peers) and their family members regarding the integration of physical healthcare and behavioral healthcare services in partnership with St. Luke’s Health Initiative and AHCCCS, and several behavioral health peer-run organizations and peer and family members. The [...]
One of our primary goals over the last couple of years has been to shift the focus of our performance measures toward actual outcomes. In other words, we don’t want to measure our success on simple activities like whether we did an intervention, placed an ad, or whether someone’s paperwork is right- but on whether [...]
