Like conflict and wars, typhoon Haiyan (local name Yolanda) destroyed basic services for food, water, health care and shelter in the Central Philippines. This disaster was declared a “Level 3” Emergency by the UN, meaning there’s substantial impact on the health of people and it can’t be managed by a country or region alone. The [...]
Thanks to all of you that made this year’s food drive a success again. We started off a little slow this year, but donations really picked up this week and we ended up collecting more than 1,000 Kg of food… with almost half coming in this week. We haven’t broken out the finals for [...]
One of the objectives in our Strategic Map is Building Awareness of Public Health Value. One of the ways we can do that is to educate community groups, students and other Stakeholders about the return on investment that public health provides and how the system works. Lucky for us the CDC recently published a PowerPoint [...]
The Arizona Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics recently updated their collection of hands-on tools that can be easily integrated into clinical practice. The tools are designed to help clinicians to incorporate clinical evidence-based recommendations for obesity prevention, assessment, treatment and referral into their practice. They’ve included a document that can be folded to [...]
The formal protest process regarding our award of the Regional Behavioral Health Authority contract in Maricopa County is finally winding down. The proceedings at the Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) were completed a few weeks ago, and the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) issued her recommendation on Monday, concluding that: “Based on the foregoing, it is [...]
The CDC just developed a great new Cost Calculator that provides state-level annual medical expenditure and absenteeism estimates for 10 chronic conditions. The tool provides medical expenditures for all of AZ for all payers as well as specific payers Medicaid, Medicare, and commercial insurers. The 10 chronic conditions are arthritis; asthma; cancer; cardiovascular diseases (congestive [...]
Whether you’re hosting a Thanksgiving celebration or attending as a guest, you can help make the healthy choice the easy choice for your friends and family. Consider making a healthier version of an old favorite to share. This recipe for Corn Bread Crusted Turkey would go great served with this slightly modified recipe for a [...]
A state law (HB 2036) was passed and signed awhile back that tasked us with several things related to the regulation of abortions in AZ. Among them were provisions directing us to develop a parental informed consent form for minors and establish a website with a host of information identified in the statute. Our next [...]
We’ve been monitoring the response times for the big ambulance service provider - Rural Metro – since they went into bankruptcy in August. They have 13 different ambulance services in Arizona and we want to make sure that they're meeting the grade during their reorganization. We asked them to send us monthly reports on their response times [...]
Arizona’s public health and healthcare system teamed up with the ADHS including our Bureau of Public Health Emergency Preparedness and the Arizona Division of Emergency Management last week in one of the largest preparedness exercises of the year. The objective was to test and build preparedness capabilities across the emergency management system in AZ. More than 3,000 [...]
