The 2017 Arizona Opioid Emergency Response Report is out today, and while significant progress has been made, there is still work to do towards reducing opioid deaths in Arizona. This report highlights the emergency response actions taken over the past year since Governor Ducey issued his public health emergency declaration in response to the data [...]
Over the past month, there has been a lot of news around unaccompanied minors and migrant children receiving care in in Arizona. ADHS is responsible for licensing health care institutions and child care facilities in Arizona and is committed to ensuring children are in a safe and nurturing environment. In fact, the health and safety [...]
Breastfeeding is a foundation of a healthy life. For the past 27 years, the first week of August has been declared World Breastfeeding Week. Breastfeeding helps to prevent malnutrition, ensures food security for infants and young children, and helps to bring people out of the hunger and poverty cycle. Breastfeeding is one of the most [...]
For the second year in a row, exemption rates, the percentage of students exempt from one or more vaccines, increased across all age categories. In the last year, exemptions rose from 3.9% to 4.3% for child care, from 4.9% to 5.4% for kindergarten, and from 5.1% to 5.4% for 6th grade. This increase in exemption rates led [...]
Diabetes is a serious health condition attributing to nearly 14,000 Arizona emergency department visits and 11,000 local hospital admissions in 2016. Diabetes, the sixth leading disease-related cause of death in Arizona, is also a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke. Uncontrolled diabetes can lead to significant disability including blindness, kidney failure and amputation. In [...]
Governor Doug Ducey has officially ended the formal emergency public health declaration he issued last year that directed our department to lead a statewide response to the opioid epidemic. We have made tremendous strides, but the work we started last June is far from complete. The list of accomplishments over this last year is long [...]
Memorial Day signals the start of summer break for many kids in Arizona as well as triple digit temperatures. Many people are preparing for upcoming outdoor activities with friends and family. While enjoying the holiday grilling or relaxing by the pool, it is important to remember safety tips to protect yourself from the Arizona heat and sun. Despite heat-related illnesses being [...]
The SunWise Program held its annual presentation of the “Be SunWise & Play Sun Smart Skin Cancer Prevention Poster Contest” on Saturday, May 5 at the Arizona Diamondbacks vs. the Houston Astros baseball game. This year marked the 15th year of the annual poster contest, which invites students from all over the state of Arizona to showcase their [...]
CDC’s Vital signs publication recently highlighted unusual antibiotic resistance germs, which are resistant to all or most antibiotics tested and are uncommon or carry special resistance genes. Antibiotic-resistant germs can spread very easily. Germs constantly develop resistance against new and older antibiotics. Examples of unusual resistance include: Vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (VRSA), Candida auris and certain types of “nightmare bacteria” such as [...]
The 1918 influenza pandemic was a devastating global event responsible for up to 100 million deaths. While it is widely known as the “Spanish Flu”, it likely did not originate there. Although most people first learned of the pandemic from Spanish news, some of the earliest documented cases were in the Midwestern U.S. In Arizona [...]
