We held our first Governor’s Council on Infectious Disease Preparedness and Response meeting late last week. The Council outlined 2 priorities…identifying a hospital or hospitals in Arizona that would be responsible for treating any Ebola patient, and improving outreach to physicians across the state to ensure that they have the information needed to effectively identify [...]
This week the CDC began providing us with a daily listing of people arriving in Arizona from Ebola affected countries. This is valuable information because it allows us to more quickly and easily identify suspect cases of Ebola right away-before community exposures occur. This week we received information about a handful of low-risk people that are [...]
As we make our way home from work and school tomorrow, neighborhoods will be filled with goblins, ghosts and superheroes. It’s a night kids look forward to all year, so we need to do our part to make sure Arizona kids have a safe Halloween. The most important thing you can do to keep kids [...]
Arizona needs more doctors to help take care of our residents’ various health issues but we are challenged with recruiting enough especially in the rural communities. The National Health Service Corps has a program called the Student to Service Loan Repayment Program which is designed to attract newly trained physicians to work in rural, underserved [...]
The National Association of City and County Health Officers Big Cities Health Coalition recently held a standing-room-only Congressional briefing on prescription drug abuse and overdose. The briefing focused on local policy successes, challenges, and solutions to help save lives. Click here to learn more about the Big Cities Health Coalition, projects they are currently engaged [...]
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 [...]
By now I’m sure you’ve heard that Arizona began recognizing same gender marriages (as an outcome of a recent federal court case). The court decision will influence some of the things that we do in our Vital Records shop - mostly as we process of death certificates. Arizona law specifies the people that can get [...]
HIV/AIDS affects or infects over 15,000 people in the state of Arizona. HIV has become a chronic disease, one that can be managed, which means most people are not dying of AIDS. However, there are still a lot of difficulties associated with being HIV positive. The prescriptions alone can be expensive and the side effects [...]
Every time a different disease surfaces in the news like MERS, Ebola or Enterovirus D 68, one of the first questions people ask is, “Is there a vaccine for it?” A new documentary created for NOVA on PBS – Vaccines – Calling the Shots recently outlined the history of vaccines and the possibility of vaccine-preventable diseases [...]
This week the Governor signed an Executive Order establishing the Governor’s Council on Infectious Disease Preparedness and Response. The Council consists of 20 public health, health-care, and other multi-sectorial partners, with the ADHS Director as the Chair. Our task will be to ensure that Arizona is prepared to rapidly and effectively respond to various infectious [...]
