On January 15, 2011, Governor Brewer released her proposed budget for next fiscal year (which begins July 1, 2011). One of the budget items would change AHCCCS (Medicaid) eligibility for adults without children (called childless adults). The ADHS currently provides behavioral health services to approximately 5,200 persons with serious mental illnesses that are childless adults. [...]
What’s the most important thing we can do to ensure a good birth outcome? During the 1980s and 1990s, public health focused on the importance of prenatal care and ensuring that every woman got into prenatal care early in the pregnancy and continued with consistent care throughout the pregnancy. Programs like Health Start enlisted lay [...]
Respiratory syncytial virus (or RSV) is another respiratory infection that mainly affects little kids and circulates every year. It occurs in the winter, like flu, but flu and RSV usually don’t peak at the same time. Since our flu season is early this year, it looks like our RSV season may be a little later [...]
Medical Marijuana Public Comments Posted We received more than 1,500 comments on our initial proposed rules to regulate medical marijuana. All the comments (over 1,000 pages) are posted on our http://www.azdhs.gov/prop203/ website for viewing. Our team is very busy reviewing the comments and suggestions looking for good ideas that will help build a more effective program. By [...]
I know many of you are following the tragedy that occurred over the weekend in Tucson. If you’re like me, you’ve been trying to make sense of something that is senseless. It is not uncommon to have a variety of reactions to a sudden and violent event such as this, and you may be struggling [...]
So far, we’ve received well over 1,300 comments on the Informal Draft Rules that we posted December 17. Our first comment period ends today. We’ll be reviewing the comments and revising our initial draft over the next couple of weeks. We’ll be releasing new draft rules for public comment on Monday, January 31, kicking off our [...]
With last year’s 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 we are back to a more usual flu season, at least so far. Our first laboratory-confirmed cases were detected earlier than most years (at the end of [...]
The Department is helping investigate a recent die off of bats in the Tucson Area. About 70 bats were found dead at the overpass near Speedway and Pantono. Initially, there was concern that the animals may have died from rabies, as rabies is always a concern when bats are downed or behaving strangely. However, a [...]
Medical Marijuana will be implemented in April, 2011. The coordination of tasks to ensure smooth and efficient implementation is a huge goal for 2011 and cuts across Bureau lines, involving many distinct portions of not only Public Health Preparedness but the Agency as a whole. Emergency Medical Services Within the Bureau of Emergency Services and [...]
Our Tobacco Prevention Program will be hitting targeted audiences (lower income Arizonans) a few days before New Years and during January with smoking cessation messages. There’s no better time to motivate folks to quit smoking than January because that’s the time of year when people generally set health goals for themselves. The ads (funded by [...]
