Prevention – Page 40 – 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.

Melanoma Reporting

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:27-07:00October 28th, 2014|Prevention|

Melanoma skin cancer is the deadliest form of skin cancer. Many believe that Arizona has similar age adjusted incidence rates to Australia, the world’s highest rate. But during the middle of the last decade, the Arizona Cancer Registry data showed a puzzling decline in cancer rates. The AZ Melanoma Task Force to look at the [...]

Comments Off

How infectious is Ebola?

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:28-07:00October 21st, 2014|Prevention|

Epidemiologists (aka disease investigators) use a number of tools to estimate the contagiousness and spread of a disease. One such tool is the R0 (R nought), which represents the average number of people one sick person will infect. It's calculated by estimating the chances of exposure, number of susceptible persons, length of contagious period, how the disease [...]

Enterovirus D68 Update from CO

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:29-07:00October 3rd, 2014|Prevention|

This week there’s been some news about kids in Colorado hospitalized with neurologic illness. At this time, 10 of the kids have been hospitalized with weakness in their limbs, but no cause has been identified. The neurologic illness could be caused by enteroviorus D68 (4 of the kids have tested positive), but we don’t yet know for [...]

What Zero Grams (0g) of Trans Fat Really Means

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:29-07:00September 25th, 2014|Prevention|

Eating foods with trans-fat (or trans fatty acids) raises low-density lipoprotein (“bad” cholesterol), lowers your high-density lipoprotein (“good” cholesterol), and is linked to heart disease. Trans fat provides no health benefit and there’s no safe level of eating trans-fat. The FDA, American Heart Association, and the Institute of Medicine all agree that trans fatty acids [...]

Comments Off

We Can Prevent Suicide

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:29-07:00September 24th, 2014|Prevention|

This is national suicide prevention month. What can you do to prevent suicide? Look for the warning signs: Those talking about wanting to die Those giving away their possessions Those feeling hopeless, or intensely lonely Those experiencing mental or physical pain Those increasing their use of substances Those discussing revenge Those demonstrating extreme mood swings [...]

Bringing Down AZ’s Teen Pregnancy Rate

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:29-07:00September 19th, 2014|Prevention|

We’re showing success in reducing our teen age pregnancies. It’s one of our winnable battles because babies born to teen moms are more likely to have bad birth outcomes; teen moms are likely to drop out of school and live in poverty. Since 2002, our teen pregnancy rate has declined almost 40%. We continue to [...]

September is Suicide Prevention Month

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:30-07:00September 9th, 2014|Prevention|

In 2012, more than 1,000 Arizonans took their own lives, including more than 200 folks who had served in the military. Suicide influences populations differently. Nationally, the group committing suicide in the greatest numbers is elderly men. In Arizona, we also have a high rate among American Indians. Additionally, those with a serious mental illness [...]

Comments Off

Bed Bugs: A Most Unwelcome Nuisance

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:30-07:00August 29th, 2014|Prevention|

Just the idea of bed bugs makes folks squirm...which is understandable, but here in Arizona we have scarier bugs like Rhipicephalus sanguineus or Culex quinquefasciatus that actually transmit diseases like Rocky Mountain spotted fever and West Nile virus. Bed bugs don’t transmit disease but they can cause skin reactions and psychosocial stress (e.g., anxiety and [...]

The 5th “Vital Sign” & the Painkiller Epidemic (Part V of V)

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:31-07:00August 27th, 2014|Prevention|

In Parts I, II, III, and IV of this series we established the acute and growing effects that the opiate painkiller epidemic is having in America, and how it has been driven (in part) by aggressive pain management strategies that were implemented since Pain was identified as the 5th Vital Sign. Since then, public health [...]

Smokeless Tobacco Causes Cancer Too

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:31-07:00August 22nd, 2014|Prevention|

Smokeless tobacco has made recent headlines with former MLB players citing their habitual use for their cancer diagnosis, including Tony Gwynn, who recently died after battling salivary gland cancer, and this week, Curt Schilling, who publicly announced his diagnosis of squamous cell carcinoma (cancer of the mouth). Both attributed their cancer to their 30+ years of chewing. The percentage of adults [...]

Previous 394041 Next