Over the past two years, folks in ITS and Epidemiology and Disease Control have been working together to enhance our state’s electronic communicable disease surveillance system called MEDSIS. This week the new version of MEDSIS went live. Major enhancements include the integration of tuberculosis reporting, case management and surveillance; expanded case management capabilities for all diseases; [...]
Taking a daily multivitamin can save babies lives by preventing birth defects. Folic acid is a B vitamin can prevent up to 70% of neural tube defects (including spina bifida and anencephaly). An average of 52 babies are born with neural tube defects in Arizona each year. The easiest way for women of childbearing age to get [...]
Our next Midwifery Scope of Practice Advisory Committee meeting will be Monday (January 14th) from 6-8 pm in the Lab conference room. The Agenda is packed with 2 full hours of information and discussion. We’ll be reviewing data from other states, and what scopes of practice they allow, as well as reviewing our own data collected from [...]
During the 2009- 2010 influenza pandemic, we saw how influenza can be unpredictable in terms of who it affects most, when it occurs, and what strains will circulate. This season is no exception. While the circulating strains are exactly what we predicted, the peak of the flu season is hitting earlier than usual (now) and it's [...]
Our Behavioral Health Services team just finished and published our FY 12 Annual Report. The new report identifies the number of clients served by service area, funding category and program; and includes programmatic financial reports of revenues, expenditures and administrative costs. In it, you'll see that we received a total of about $1.46B in funding for FY 2012 for behavioral health services. Our Agency [...]
Our team at the Bureau of Health Systems Development recently posted a new interactive website to help people easily locate a clinic that provides free or low cost primary, mental and dental health services to people without health insurance. These Sliding Fee Schedule clinics determine, based on gross family income, the portion of billed charges [...]
We all need to take care of both our physical and behavioral health needs in order to be healthy. The mind and body aren't separated- and neither should the health-care delivery system- especially for folks with a serious mental illness. Folks with a serious mental illness die more than 25 years earlier than the general [...]
Valley Fever typically peaks in late fall and early winter with a minor peak from June to August (refer to the 2007-2011 Valley Fever Report). Those who've been in Arizona for a while may know that Valley Fever is a lung infection caused by a fungus that is common in the soil here. In most cases, [...]
The CDC released a free application last month that allows users to access current influenza recommendations and influenza activity updates. You can click here to download. You'll be able to check our where we are relative to the rest of the country and view the new methods of analysis presented on the new site. On our flu [...]
Healthcare-associated infections are a critical public health challenge in Arizona and in the US. Healthcare associated infections (HAIs) are acquired during healthcare treatment and can be devastating and even deadly- and they’re largely preventable. You may have seen the article in last week's Republic about dirty needles and their link to transmission of viruses and drug-resistant superbugs. The article [...]
