A few weeks ago I issued a Director’s Decision that will authorize the use of marijuana (under the AZ Medical Marijuana Act) for patients undergoing treatment for PTSD. Medical marijuana certifications will be valid only for palliative care (not treatment). I delayed the implementation date until January 1 to allow time for certifying physicians, dispensary [...]
Newborn Screening consists of critical laboratory and bedside tests done on newborns to see if they have certain inherited diseases. Early detection for these specific diseases is critical for the babies, doctors and parents, because delays in treatment can result in irreversible developmental delays, sickness and even death. With the passage of HB 2491 last [...]
The vast majority of Arizonans are born in hospitals. Shortly after delivery the electronic paperwork to establish an Arizona birth certificate gets input and processed. Even babies delivered at home attended by a midwife (about 1% of Arizona births) have their birth certificate information captured and processed. Many years ago, especially in Arizona’s Indian Country, [...]
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 [...]
This week the CDC confirmed the first case of Ebola diagnosed in the US. The person had traveled from Liberia to Dallas. The patient didn’t have symptoms when he left Liberia, but developed them 5 days after arriving in Dallas on September 20 - meaning that folks on the plane have no risk of developing Ebola [...]
A couple weeks ago I wrote about our new Community Profiles Dashboards. They’re a huge leap forward for public health professionals, city planners, non-profit organizations, medical providers and anyone interested in health data. The data are arranged on the Dashboards - in state, county, and Primary Care Areas - to provide several options to compare and explore [...]
Child-serving organizations and community leaders will be meeting at the 2014 National Latino Children’s Summit on October 3rd in Phoenix. It’s called The State of Latino Children: Our Future – and it’ll focus on health, child safety, education and more. At the summit, Dyanne Herrera from our Office of Women and Children’s Health will provide [...]
Our most recent AzHIP broadcast is posted to the Arizona State Health Assessment section (look under the Resources heading). A big thank you to everyone involved for their hard work. The next set of heavy lifting is putting together the working groups that will assemble gap analysis and the intervention ideas that will flesh out [...]
After more than 30 years of litigation, the Maricopa County Superior Court last week dismissed the Arnold v. Sarn lawsuit, retaining jurisdiction to enforce the on-going agreement that lead to this historic resolution. The dismissal is the result of a comprehensive joint stipulation – filed by the parties and approved by the court earlier this year [...]
Abuse of prescription drugs is a public health epidemic, but you can do your part in helping to curb access to prescription drugs with one simple step: get rid of your old and unused medications. This weekend is the National Prescription Drug Take Back Day held by the DEA and state and local partners. Removing [...]
