One of our primary objectives over the last couple of years in behavioral health has been to shift the focus of our performance measures away from process and procedures toward actual outcomes. In other words, we don’t want to measure our success on whether someone’s paperwork is right, but on whether the services we provide [...]
It’s time to step up to the plate if you’re interested in providing clear and concise information about how best to integrate primary and acute healthcare with behavioral health care for folks with serious mental illnesses in Arizona. One of our top priorities in behavioral health over the coming years will be to better integrate [...]
With all the fire response activity this week- I thought I’d do a piece on the framework that we’re all using for our response activities. We use the National Incident Management System (NIMS) to guide and organize all of our responses because it provides a systematic, proactive structure with which to organize response activities. Many [...]
Our behavioral health coalition completed and published our brand-new Raise Your Voice! Report... a product of our behavioral health focus groups with peers and family members in late 2010. We’re most proud of the fact that the entire process—from beginning to end—had the full participation or peers and family members (from the Arizona Peer and Family Coalition) in planning, organizing, leading [...]
The Arizona Department of Health Services has serious concerns about the legality of so-called cannabis clubs. The information that we have regarding these "clubs" suggests that they are distributing marijuana to customers in a way that is inconsistent with the provisions of the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act, and the persons involved could be conducting illegal marijuana transactions. For this [...]
Recently, the department has received numerous inquiries about fad diets: Do they work? Are they safe? Will they help me lose weight? Our nutrition department put together a couple of tips to watch out for when it comes to dieting. 1) Promotes a drastic weight loss in a short period of time. Losing more than [...]
Public health and the law are intertwined- and you can’t really be effective at developing public health policies and interventions without understanding how the law interfaces with public health. We’re fortunate to have a fantastic local resource right here in Arizona. The Public Health Law and Policy Program at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law [...]
A new law was passed last legislative session (HB 2416) that expanded the definition of an abortion to include “any means” (the former definition was limited to surgical abortions) and changed the qualifications for who can perform the procedure. For us, it meant that beginning July 21 (when the law was to take effect) we'd be responsible for [...]
A few weeks ago I blogged about the June plenary session of the Arizona Mexico Commission called Arizona & Sonora: Gateway for Innovation. The conference provided an opportunity to move forward a bi-national agenda supported by Arizona and Sonora. The health committee discussed regional approaches to valley fever surveillance, burn patient infrastructure, substance abuse, TB, border [...]
You'll remember that ADHS and AHCCCS jointly applied for and received a $750K Planning Grant to explore integrating primary health care and behavioral health care- especially for folks with serious mental illnesses. Our teams have been very busy over the last couple of weeks getting the initiative underway. One of the concepts we're exploring is a specialty Regional [...]
