There’s increasing evidence that whether a person will have a healthy weight as an adult is influenced by nutrition and physical activity in the first 5 years of life. In fact, a new study this week in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that overweight 5-year-olds are 4 x more likely to become obese [...]
Arizona continues to score high marks on preparedness according to a CDC report released this week. We got a perfect score this year for biological laboratory testing, and we’ve kept our excellent performance measures for incident management, public information, and medical countermeasures. Our response times for activating our emergency operation center have been well above [...]
As Cory mentioned in his blog awhile back, our award of the Maricopa County integrated behavioral health services contract to Mercy Maricopa Integrated Care (Mercy Maricopa) was affirmed and the Stay on transition activities was lifted a few weeks ago. Magellan elected to exercise their right to additional due process and has filed a Motion in Superior [...]
Getting access to primary care providers is critical to disease prevention. The problem is that there aren’t enough primary care providers nationwide. Arizona is short by about 300 primary care physicians, 250 dentists and about 70 psychiatrists. That’s why Arizona has been aggressive in their efforts to recruit providers to work in Arizona, specifically in [...]
The new Surgeon General’s report on smoking called The Health Consequences of Smoking—50 Years of Progress: A Report of the Surgeon General adds diabetes, colorectal and liver cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, erectile dysfunction, age-related macular degeneration, and other conditions to the list of diseases that cigarette smoking causes. The report (released this week) concludes that secondhand [...]
Last year 3,663 refugees resettled in Arizona from 45 different countries (about 1/3 were from Iraq). Refugees have a variety of pressing social, economic and health needs when they arrive. That’s where our ADHS Refugee Health Program comes in. Our Refugee Health Coordinator, Zachary Holden, works with partners to ensure that refugees arrive healthy and maintain good [...]
HB 2036 was passed and signed during the 2012 legislative session… tasking the ADHS with several things related to the regulation of abortions. Among them were requirements for us to: 1) Develop a parental informed consent form for minors seeking an abortion; 2) Establish a website with information identified in the Statute; and 3) Require [...]
Every year our most popular annual report (it’s not even close) is called the Arizona Health Status and Vital Statistics Annual Report. We released the 2012 Arizona Health Status and Vital Statistics Annual Report this week- and this time it’s mobile friendly so can pull it up on your IPad, IPhone and other Android devices. The document contains hotlinks and [...]
The popular MTV TV shows called 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom appear to be contributing to declines in the U.S. teen birth rate according to new research released this week by economists at the University of Maryland and Wellesley College. 16 and Pregnant is essentially a documentary series focusing on teen pregnancy. Each episode [...]
Influenza has been steadily spreading in Arizona over the last few weeks and this week we hit the Widespread Influenza threshold. In fact, the number of cases increased by 50% this week- and several Arizona emergency departments are backed up with substantial wait times. CDC’s report is due to come out Friday… but I’d guess that most states will [...]
