Robert Koch was a German physician that’s considered one of the primary founders of microbiology- setting the foundation for loads of public health interventions that have drastically improved our quality of life. He was the first scientist to verify the Germ Theory of Disease (in 1876) by showing that anthrax is caused by a bacteria [...]
The major public health achievements of the first 10 years of the 21st century included improvements in vaccine preventable and infectious diseases, reductions in deaths from certain chronic diseases, declines in deaths and injuries from motor vehicle crashes, and more, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 10 domestic [...]
The Arizona Mexico Commission was started by then Arizona Governor Paul Fannin in 1959 to improve partnering between Arizona and Sonora in a wide range of areas. It’s evolved over the years to become a premiere and unique cross-border nonprofit organization whose mission is to improve the well-being and quality of life for residents of [...]
The Wallow Fire is burning a few miles SW of Alpine. It was still pretty small yesterday (about 6,000 acres) but exploded overnight to more than 100,000 acres today. The fire spread to the northeast toward Alpine today and the incident management team issued an evacuation order for Alpine a few minutes ago, requiring folks to leave [...]
Arizona has been able to decrease the rate of deaths from car, truck and motorcycle crashes by 43% in the last 4 years, from about 19 deaths per 100,000 in 2005 to 11 per 100,000 Arizonans in 2009. While this is good progress, we still have a long way to go. Crashes are still the [...]
The USDA kicked off their (well-researched) approach to help folks better understand how to make better and healthier food choices. The new approach- called MyPlate presents a new way to look at what you eat- and replaces the 2 decade old “food pyramid”. The MyPlate approach will become the new curriculum moving forward for schools [...]
A prospective dispensary applicant came to our offices this morning in an effort to submit an application for a dispensary registration certificate. We declined to accept the application because, as I wrote on Friday, we won’t be accepting dispensary registration certificate applications until the outcome of legal action filed last week. There were several members [...]
The World Health Organization International Agency for Research on Cancer met this week in Lyon, France to analyze health-risk data regarding the electromagnetic fields generated by cell phones. Their initial report was published this week, concluding that the chronic use of cell phones could be “possibly carcinogenic to humans”. The group didn’t do any primary [...]
Over 166,000 Arizonans kicked their tobacco habit in 2010. Our smoking rate now stands at only 13.5%. This news is exciting when you consider that many states have seen increases in tobacco use over the last couple of years. This brand-new data isn’t published yet, but our team thinks that this will put is neck-and-neck [...]
In light of recent communication from the U.S. Attorney for Arizona, the Governor asked the Attorney General to file a suit this week asking for a declaratory judgment from a federal court regarding the legality of the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act and our Rules. We had been planning to begin accepting dispensary applications beginning next [...]
