As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, the covered services will be changing for adults with serious mental illness who do not qualify for Medicaid in response to recent budget reductions. We’ve established a dedicated project team to research strategies to responsibly implement the benefit reductions. The project team, composed of peers, family members and agency [...]
Monday, April 19 is the registration deadline to vote on Proposition 100- which is the Special Election for the 3 year, 1% sales tax that would benefit education, public safety and health services (including behavioral health). The election will be held on May 18, but many people will be voting using early mail-in ballots. If [...]
Go out to our own Carol Hensell (from the Bureau of Women’s and Children’s Health). Carol won the 2010 Cherish the Children Award in the Individual category. This Award is given each April as part of Child Abuse Prevention Awareness Month by the Greater Phoenix Child Abuse Prevention Council, a volunteer organization that works to [...]
We rolled out our new public health information system … called Arizona Health Matters http://www.arizonahealthmatters.org/. It’s an electronic one stop source of unbiased data and information about community health and healthy communities in general. It’s intended to help planners, policy makers, and community members learn about issues and identify improvements. On the site, you can [...]
Let’s start with a quick quiz on this one… Which of the following food items contains more fat: 2 slices of pepperoni pizza 1 order of large fries 3 glasses of whole milk 8 strips of bacon The answer is 3. 3 glasses of whole milk. If you pour whole milk at mealtime for your [...]
We updated our home page this week and added an information hub for behavioral health. The information at this site will be regularly updated in the coming weeks as we begin to implement behavioral health service reductions for folks that don’t qualify for benefits under AHCCCS. Our commitment is to continually share updated information with [...]
Our Licensing programs for medical and long-term care facilities have been nominated for a national award by the Region IX Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services office for our High-quality work in the area of Survey and Certification under difficult circumstances; Significant performance improvement in meeting the goals of the Medicare and Medicaid Survey &Certification [...]
The latest CDC Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report has the latest on the state-by-state H1N1 vaccination rates for kids as well as national percentages for healthcare workers. Arizona had the highest vaccination rates for kids in the western U.S. The national vaccination rates for healthcare workers were a little disappointing (about 40%)- but keep in [...]
Our Behavioral Health Office of Prevention http://www.azdhs.gov/bhs/ops.htm provides tools, resources and technical support to promote the resiliency and prevention of behavioral health/substance abuse disorders in our communities. Our goal is to empower communities and kids to make healthier choices by collaborating with Arizona’s prevention workforce, including our Tribal/Regional Behavioral Health Authorities and local communities; strategically [...]
The US Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee, passed legislation out of their Committee to reauthorize WIC and the other Child Nutrition Programs last week. It’s called the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. The bill http://ag.senate.gov/site/legislation.html includes the reauthorization of the free and reduced lunch and breakfast programs. I was in DC a couple [...]
