Take Action to Improve Health Communication
October is Health Literacy Month. It is a great time for individuals and organizations to promote the importance of understandable health information. Health Literacy is the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions. In the United States, only 12 percent or nearly one in [...]
National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week
The last week of October every year is dedicated to promoting awareness of lead poisoning by CDC, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and other partners. This year, the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program is teaming up with our new Environmental Public Health Tracking Program to call on pediatricians and parents to [...]
Vaccine Preventable Diseases in 2016 – Measles, Flu, and Hib
The 2016 Vaccine-Preventable Diseases Annual Report was released by the Office of Infectious Disease Services this past week. It highlights five vaccine-preventable diseases that disease detectives track and monitor, tasks that are critical to help identify cases and reduce further spread to others. This report covers the largest measles outbreak in the nation for 2016, the influenza season with the [...]
Opioid Update: Latest Data and Emergency Rules Update
The emergency declaration for opioid overdoses continues in Arizona, as does the hard work of people across the state doing their part to curb the opioid epidemic. Latest data from the opioid surveillance show that more than 3,200 opioid overdoses have been suspected, with over 400 of those being deaths since June 15. Here’s some of what we’ve learned so far: [...]
2017 Arizona Dental Infection Prevention Collaborative
Our Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAI) Program collaborated with the Organization of Safety, Asepsis and Prevention (OSAP) to provide a day long Arizona Dental Infection Prevention Collaborative. The collaborative, held September 29th, brought together about 100 Arizona dental providers to learn new evidence-based practices in preventing infections and reducing harm. This training event provided education to infection control coordinators and dental personnel [...]
Updated Data Added to Community Profiles Dashboard
Our Community Profiles Dashboard is a public information website developed by ADHS to provide the public with a quick, convenient no-cost data summary tool for Arizona health data. Data on the Dashboard were just recently updated and now include data from 2010 through 2015. The 2016 data are expected to be added later this year or early 2018. The dashboard allows [...]