Kathy McCanna, Alan Oppenheim, and Connie Belden (from Licensing) and Kristy Benton (from Behavioral Health) recently jumped head-first into a new Arizona health-care initiative called No Place Like Home which is Arizona’s approach to the Partnership for Patients: Better Care, Lower Costs project. The project aims to prevent hospital-acquired conditions and hospital re-admissions. The name [...]
We’ve got a treasure trove of statewide public health indicators website called “Arizona Health Matters” http://www.arizonahealthmatters.org/ which has a wealth of information about the health status of Arizonans- and includes lots of other interesting data including Promising Practices and Evidence Based Interventions. The site includes more than 100 health and quality of life indicators, an [...]
Registered Dieticians Day happens every year during National Nutrition Month. This year it was March 14th – RDs have degrees in nutrition, dietetics, public health or a related field and work in many different jobs to make sure people know what food they’re eating and the impacts of those decisions. The day recognizes them for their [...]
We just received a new grant award from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials to participate in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s National Quality Improvement Demonstration Initiative! Arizona was only one of only 5 states with a successful application. This is great for Arizona for a number of reasons. First, it’ll help prepare [...]
When I got into public health 25 years ago, it was kind of a boutique profession. Since then, it’s really gone mainstream- and public health is increasingly being recognized as a key element in driving down our country’s increasing health care costs. So if you’re a beginning or mid-career professional- get in on the ground [...]
The Pew Center on the States released a report last week that shows the need for preventative oral health care in the US. The report highlights the rising number of people with dental problems who end up in hospital ERs.
The U of A has developed an Arizona Public Health Training Center whose mission is to assess, develop, and deliver training to current and future public health professionals and other community leaders... building and strengthening our public health infrastructure. One of their strategies is to develop what they call "academic health departments". They've asked us to partner with them and become an academic health department, which [...]
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine and the U of A College of Nursing are sponsoring a Continuing Medical Education Conference on April 27–28, at the Loews Ventana Canyon Resort in Tucson. The Conference is called “The Endocannabinoid System: Clinical Implications for Health Care (Course #MMJ12106)”.
Believe it or not, it’s been almost a year since we started issuing the first medical marijuana cards for qualifying patients and designated caregivers. This week marks the beginning of the first renewal period for the folks that applied for cards at the start of the program. Our medical marijuana webpage has instructions and the [...]
Guess which organism killed 14,000 people last year- quadrupling in number in the last 10 years, and costing $1B extra in health care. Almost all the cases happen among people who recently received medical care. Ironically, antibiotics are making the problem worse, because when a person takes antibiotics, good germs that protect against infection are [...]
