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 [...]
Some of the best infection control experts are laying out the plan on how to fight Healthcare-Associated Infections in the next decade. The International Conference on HAIs just wrapped up in Atlanta – it marked the first time that four leading scientific organizations committed to infection prevention are working together to further a scientific and [...]
Saturday is the third annual MyFest event out a Tempe town Lake. This is a huge Magellan-organized youth event aimed at combating stigma associated with mental illness and is a great opportunity to get positive messages out there to youth across the state. We expect several thousand youth to be there. It’s a youth involvement [...]
I don’t have to tell you that we’ve faced unprecedented challenges over the last couple of years. State revenues have declined for nearly 3 years now, and we’ve dramatically reduced our spending and staffing levels in an effort to bring spending in line with state revenues. Excluding the money that goes toward the matching funds [...]
We had our agency Sunset Hearing last Wednesday in the Senate. Every 10 years our agency comes up for a redetermination to see if the mission of the department is still necessary etc. If so, then ADHS is “reauthorized”- hopefully for another 10 years. The bill (HB 2029) passed out of the House several weeks [...]
Performance Pay Reduction The state budget that was recently signed included an indefinite (probably permanent) suspension of performance pay (2.75%) beginning May 29. The effective date of the bill (HB2003) is June 15- so that's the day that the reduction will be actually implemented. But since this is in the middle of a pay period, we won't begin to actually [...]
Performance Pay Reduction The state budget that was recently signed included an indefinite (probably permanent) suspension of performance pay (2.75%) beginning May 29. The effective date of the bill (HB2003) is June 15- so that's the day that the reduction will be actually implemented. But since this is in the middle of a pay period, we won't begin to actually [...]
Our Licensing & Operations Divisions went live with our new Online Complaint Form system. It took some old fashioned elbow grease and creativity to put together this new time saving application- that will allow our licensing folks to more efficiently take and track complaints- and to more efficiently get back with folks that file them. [...]
Pima County will receive a $16 million grant as part of the national Communities Putting Prevention to Work efforts funded through the federal Stimulus program. They’ll be creating a community-wide set of strategies and interventions to reduce obesity by ensuring safe, attractive accessible places for physical activity and making healthy foods available, accessible, and affordable. [...]
Thursday afternoon the Governor signed the budget bills that the Legislature passed that prescribed budgets for the remaining part of FY 2010 and FY 2011. The deal is complicated and contains lots of details. Most of the provisions for our agency pertain to reductions in services that will begin next fiscal year (which starts July 1)- including orders to [...]
