Prevention – Page 36 – AZ Dept. of Health Services News

Topics here will include issues that fall into the Prevention Division of the agency, which include – as the name implies – programs that help prevent disease in our state. You will find information about chronic diseases (cancer, heart health, breathing disorders) as well as tobacco use prevention. This area also includes education about Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Women, Infant and Children programs; both USDA programs that help provide nutrition to lower income residents.

AZ Measles Outbreak Winds Down

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:18-07:00February 13th, 2015|Preparedness, Prevention|

So far, there have been over a hundred cases of measles associated with Disneyland (including seven here in Arizona). We’re lucky no “third generation” cases have been found here (yet). Measles can take up to 21 days to develop in a person who has been exposed to the disease, so we’re not out of the [...]

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Smoking & Pregnancy

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:18-07:00February 12th, 2015|Prevention|

Smoking during pregnancy remains a risk to the health of Arizona infants. The Health Status and Vital Statistics Report for 2013 found that 4.4% of Arizona moms smoked during their pregnancy. Smoking during pregnancy is associated with a significantly increased risk for many birth defects. A new article found that smoking during pregnancy is associated with [...]

What’s Sleep Hygiene?

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:18-07:00February 11th, 2015|Prevention|

If you're like my family, there are times when some of you don't get enough sleep. In fact about 30% of Americans don't get the number of hours of sleep we need to stay healthy. Now that everybody is plugged into an electronic device these days it seems to be getting worse. Electronic devices and even some night lights [...]

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Everybody Needs a Good Night’s Sleep

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:19-07:00February 10th, 2015|Prevention|

Food, water, air, shelter and sleep. Those are the Big 5 things that everyone needs. Everybody needs a good dose of restful sleep to stay healthy and thrive...but the amount of sleep changes throughout the lifetime. Last week, the National Sleep Foundation came out with some interesting and helpful recommendations for how much sleep folks need at various ages. When people don't get [...]

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From the Harvard School of Public Health

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:19-07:00February 9th, 2015|Prevention|

The new Healthy Heart Score developed by researchers at Harvard School of Public Health gives people an easy way to estimate their risk of developing cardiovascular disease based on simple lifestyle habits. The free web-based survey also gives users practical tips for improving their scores by incorporating heart-healthy habits into their daily lives. The calculator [...]

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Healthcare Associated Infection Report

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:19-07:00February 3rd, 2015|Prevention|

Last month the CDC issued their updated National and State Healthcare Associated Infections Progress Report, which provides healthcare-associated infections data from 2013. Overall, the report found improvements nationally in performance, with reductions in most categories. Between 2012 and 2013, we reduced catheter-associated urinary tract infections and surgical site infections. We’ve had significant improvements in central-line associated bloodstream [...]

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Additional Measles Cases Found this Week

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:19-07:00January 28th, 2015|Preparedness, Prevention|

Last week I wrote about the 5 measles cases that we had identified as part of the nationwide Disneyland outbreak. Four of the AZ cases were among an unvaccinated Pinal County family that had visited Disneyland. This week over 1000 contacts were identified among our now 7 measles cases. Here’s a quick summary: One of [...]

AZ Interventions to Improve Vaccination Rates

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:19-07:00January 27th, 2015|Preparedness, Prevention|

Arizona law requires kids to get certain vaccines in order to attend school unless a doctor signs a medical exemption form or a parent signs a religious or personal belief exemption form. There’s been an increasing number of parents who are signing personal belief exemption forms - putting herd mmunity at risk. Every year we [...]

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Unvaccinated Kids Come in Clusters

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:20-07:00January 27th, 2015|Preparedness, Prevention|

Courtesy: Journal of Pediatrics Last week’s issue of the Journal Pediatrics sheds light on something that we see here in Arizona - that parental refusal and delay of childhood vaccines is clustered in certain communities. The study was done in California and found that the percentage of kids who were under-immunized increased from 8% [...]

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Vaccines & the Social Contract

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:20-07:00January 26th, 2015|Preparedness, Prevention|

At the core - vaccines are really about community protection. Our public health system depends on a solid network of providers that are available to vaccinate kids for all of the nasty infectious diseases that have plagued humanity for millennium. It’s not just access to care and a solid network of providers that vaccinate that [...]

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