Last week Southwest Ambulance workers (Southwest is a subsidiary of Rural/Metro) voted to authorize their union management to call a strike in Pima, Pinal, and Maricopa Counties. The union’s management hasn't yet called for a strike and hopefully both parties will continue to negotiate and reach a deal. If they do decide to call a strike, [...]
Last fall I wrote about how contagious Ebola is compared to other diseases, using a mathematical calculation called R0 (R naught). R0 is a tool we use in epidemiology to estimate the average number of people one sick person will infect. The R0 for measles is off the charts. It has one of the highest R0 [...]
The federal government considers the Super Bowl to be an “event of national significance.” A host of public safety and health activities are implemented during events of national significance. Our (ADHS) activities began with the Pro Bowl last weekend and finish after the Super Bowl on February 1. We have 3 primary functions: BioWatch and Suspicious [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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% [...]
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 [...]
By now you’ve probably heard about the measles outbreak associated with travel to Disneyland. CDC is reporting about 50 measles cases (in multiple states) who had been to Disneyland in late December. Arizona joined the list this week. This week we had 5 measles cases associated with the Disneyland outbreak, one in Maricopa County and 4 in Pinal [...]
Substance abuse causes a host of bad public health outcomes including unintentional injuries, accidents, risk of domestic violence, medical problems, and even death…and alcohol abuse is at the top of the list. Drinking too much increases your chances of being injured or even killed. Alcohol is a factor in about 60% of homicides, 50% of [...]
Excessive alcohol use is the 4th leading preventable cause of death in the US. In fact, excessive drinking causes about 10% of deaths among 20–64 year olds…with binge drinking responsible for about half of that 10%. Nationally, alcohol is a factor in about 60% of homicides, 50% of severe trauma injuries, and 40% of car [...]
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