Dramatic Reductions in Illegal Sales of Tobacco to Minors
Public health efforts continue to move the needle on reducing smoking rates among youth. And that’s important since 90 percent of adult tobacco users report using tobacco in their teen years. Tobacco use among Arizona youth is at an all-time low of 10 percent , which is a decrease of over 40 percent in the past four years. To achieve [...]
Largest measles outbreak of the year… so far
For the past three months, state and local public health disease detectives have been working tirelessly to bring an end to the measles outbreak originating from a private detention facility in Eloy, Arizona. This week, the outbreak is officially closed. A total of 22 cases have been reported during this three month outbreak, all of them coming from the detention [...]
SunWise Program Helps Arizona Youth Beat the Summer Heat
Our SunWise Skin Cancer Prevention Program has been working all summer spreading the sun safety message throughout the community. In June and July we worked with the Parks and Recreation Departments with City of Phoenix and City of Glendale for their summer camps series. The SunWise Program visited several sites teaching day campers from ages 6 to 12 sun safe [...]
To Game or not to Game? The Dilemma of Zika and the Olympics
The 2016 Summer Olympics will soon take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a Zika-affected country. This has created a lot of discussion about the risk for travelers and their families. CDC and the WHO have both affirmed that travel to the Olympics is not any riskier than non-Olympic-related travel to Zika affected areas. The only groups recommended to avoid [...]
Adults Need Vaccines, Too!
Every year, tens of thousands of adults in the United States suffer serious health problems, are hospitalized, or even die from diseases that could have been prevented by vaccination. Arizona has had 22 cases of measles in adults this year, making it the biggest measles outbreak of 2016 in the US. To celebrate the importance of immunizations throughout life—and to [...]
Strengthening Infectious Disease Training in Arizona and Beyond
Last week, we hosted our seventh annual Arizona Infectious Disease Training and Exercise, where nearly 400 partners from a wide variety of organizations joined together to learn and share about current infectious disease trends in Arizona and surrounding states. We hosted speakers from local Arizona jurisdictions, other states, CDC, and even from Sonora, Mexico. Our agenda details each of the [...]