Over the last decade the Labor Day weekend has become one of the most dangerous weekends for car crashes (along with 4th of July and Thanksgiving weekends)… so this weekend is a great time to think road safety. Arizona has decreased the death rate from car, truck and motorcycle crashes by almost 50% in the last 5 years- [...]
The ADHS’ Arizona Biomedical Research Commission has submitted over 66 patent requests worldwide, and has been granted 9 patents within the US in collaboration with ASU and the U of A. The Commission has 22 patent requests published or pending in 7 different countries. Many of the granted patents are anti-cancer compounds. The ABRC continues to [...]
Much of what we do in public health depends on the system seeking out “leverage” meaning designing interventions that have high impact with minimal cost. Malena Bazurto and the Apache County Health District recently won a national award for her creative idea incorporating leverage. Malena noticed that St. John’s had little walk-able space for folks to get [...]
Last summer we applied for funding from the CDC under the Climate-Ready Initiative to develop the Extreme Weather and Public Health materials. The program is focusing on heat related illnesses and ways to increase knowledge of healthy responses to excessive heat situations. The program worked with Kate Hoy and Dallas Teat to produce a training [...]
When it comes to microbes- the whooping cough (pertussis) is a contrarian. Unlike most other pathogens- it does better in the summer than the winter. While most other infectious diseases are on the wane right now- whooping cough is whooping it up. We’ve been seeing an increase in whooping cough cases in Arizona this summer- [...]
By now you know all about our goal of improving integration of care for individuals with a serious mental illness. In looking more closely at this population, we noticed that about 50% of folks with a serious mental illness who are enrolled with Medicaid (AHCCCS) are also enrolled in Medicare… meaning that they’re “dual eligible.” [...]
Back-to-school time means that a new bolus of high-schoolers that got their license over the summer are hitting the streets for the first time during the school year. All the data suggests that the first year of driving is an especially important time for safe driving skill development. Fortunately, our State has a “Graduated Drivers [...]
The new Arizona State Hospital forensic unit construction is on track and progressing nicely. We're in the home stretch now- and the contractors are putting the finishing touches on the project. The new facility will be a huge help and will be much more conducive to helping our patients on their recovery path. It'll also really improve the working [...]
We’ve had a few inquiries about the number, kinds, and the contents of the (six) lawsuits that have been filed regarding medical marijuana in Arizona. We created a new Lawsuits webpage for folks that want to read the active suits.
A recent lawsuit (Planned Parenthood of Arizona v. Humble et.al.) was resolved this week. The lawsuit had challenged a new law (signed last legislative session) that (among other changes) requires us to license facilities that perform medication abortions. We already license and inspect facilities that do surgical abortions- the new law requires that facilities that [...]
