Keep Your Kids Safe from the Sun all Year to Reduce the Risk of Cancer
Practicing good sun safety is important at any age, but it is especially important for children since much of a person's lifetime exposure to the sun occurs before age 18. Arizona residents are at risk for developing skin cancer because our sunny state has areas of high environmental exposure and limited protection. It's hard to avoid the sun in our [...]
Needle Injuries at Work: Protect Yourself and Your Coworkers
When you work in public health, you know it’s scary to get stuck by a needle in a trashcan, bathroom or another unexpected place. While needles and syringes are used for the medical treatment of multiple conditions such as arthritis, psoriasis, diabetes, and cancer, there is always the fear that a discarded needle also carries blood infected with harmful virus. The [...]
Sugar-Sweetened Beverages and Our Kids
For years, it has been recommended that everyone consume less sugar. New information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gives a clear picture of just how much sugar our kids are getting from sugar-sweetened beverages. Almost two-thirds of the young ones and teens (ages 2 through 19 years) are drinking at least one sugar-sweetened beverage each day and [...]
Take Steps to Lower Your Risk for Heart Disease
A top priority for our department is to develop prevention programs, services and public education campaigns that help Arizona families make choices that will improve their health and wellness. A major focus of many of our initiatives is preventing heart disease. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both women and men in the United States. While heart [...]
Anatomy of a Foodborne Disease Outbreak Investigation
Public health is always hard at work identifying and solving outbreaks. In the case of foodborne diseases, public health epidemiologists, nurses, and lab scientists are teaming up at local, state and federal levels to find out what food made people sick. When two or more people with the same foodborne disease get sick from the same source, we have an [...]
Sharing Information about the State of Infectious Disease in Arizona
Our Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAI) program works with various partners to improve patient safety across Arizona. On January 20th, the HAI program collaborated with the local Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology Grand Canyon Chapter (APIC) to host their annual State of the State meeting. This event took place at Health Services Advisory Group and was attended by more than 70 infection preventionists and other [...]