Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve reflected about some of the innovative strategies that we’ve implemented with our behavioral health community partners over the last several years to improve the health status of folks with a serious mental illness. So far, I’ve covered integrated health homes and improvements to the crisis system. On the [...]
Last week an FDA panel unanimously recommended rejecting a new drug that’s a combination of morphine and oxycodone – two very strong painkillers. The panel, Anesthetic and Analgesic Drug Products Advisory Committee, said the company didn’t provide data to prove that Moxduo is more effective or safer than using one of the already available drugs. [...]
Ventanilla de Salud (Health Windows) is a program that improves access to preventive health care, health education, and public health screening at Mexican consular offices throughout the US. There are 5 Ventanillas in AZ (Douglas, Nogales, Phoenix, Tucson, and Yuma). The Ventanillas are operated jointly by the Department of Health of Mexico (Secretaria de Salud [...]
You may be contributing to one of Arizona’s biggest public health problems and not even realize it. Arizona has the 6th highest rate in the country for prescription drug misuse and drug overdose death. What’s really frightening is that more than 90% of Arizona youth that misuse prescription drugs get them from family and friends. The [...]
It’s no public health secret that tobacco use continues to be a dominant cause of preventable disease and death in the US. While the trend has been encouraging (Arizona’s smoking rate is down to 17%), there’s still much work to be done- and continued efforts to provide creative and effective ways to help adult smokers [...]
We license and inspect abortion clinics in AZ. Due to a court settlement agreement (unlike other health care institutions we license) we’re currently required to get an administrative search warrant before conducting an unannounced inspection of an abortion clinic. For a routine compliance inspection, we need to give them 10 days-notice. On Tuesday, the [...]
Group B Streptococcus bacteria is a leading cause of infection and death within the first week of life. Each year about 40 infants less than 1-week old get early-onset group B strep disease in Arizona. The bacteria can cause life-threatening infections like sepsis (infection of the blood), pneumonia (infection in the lungs), and meningitis (infection [...]
Over the next couple of weeks I’ll continue reflecting about some of the innovative strategies that we’ve implemented with our behavioral health community partners over the last several years to improve the health status of folks with a serious mental illness. Last week I wrote about the Integrated Health Homes initiative. Another success has been [...]
Those of you in Public Health Licensing have heard me talk about the difference between compliance and enforcement more than once. They’re 2 different things. Compliance means that a licensed healthcare, residential or childcare facility meets our standards and expectations. Enforcement is an action that we occasionally take in order to get a facility into [...]
Three years ago we made the commitment to overhaul the way we regulate Arizona’s 5,500 licensed healthcare facilities. Our goal was to move from the existing prescriptive regulations to a new set of outcome-based rules. The idea was to shift from the former 2-dimensional standards to a deeper set of 3-dimensional regulations. The final regulations that [...]
