National Healthy and Safe Swimming Week
For the 12th year in a row, the week before Memorial Day has been designated as National Healthy and Safe Swimming Week. This week is dedicated to focusing on simple steps swimmers can take to help ensure a healthy and safe swimming experience. While most people know they can get sick from eating or drinking contaminated food or water, they might [...]
Arizona’s Zika Action Plan Summit is in the books!
Yesterday, we hosted our Arizona Zika Action Plan Summit in Phoenix. Nearly 350 partners from across Arizona – public and environmental health departments, healthcare providers and organizations, key state and local agencies, elected officials, public health colleagues from the Ministry of Health in Sonora, and many, many other critical prevention and response partners – attended to learn more about Zika [...]
Improving Timeliness of Infectious Disease Reporting in Arizona
Arizona laboratories are required to report certain infectious disease test results to public health so that our state and local disease investigators can prevent and control further spread of disease. Many labs do this by faxing or mailing paper to ADHS. Our informatics staff in the Office of Infectious Disease Services are transitioning these labs to Electronic Laboratory Reporting (ELR). [...]
Arizona Nutrition Network Meeting a Success
Nearly 150 people participated in the Arizona Nutrition Network's two-day annual contractors meeting held earlier this month in Phoenix. The event featured national and local speakers on implementing policy, systems, and environmental change strategies to improve healthy eating and active living opportunities in Arizona. The meeting highlighted the synergy and collaborative efforts between the Arizona Nutrition Network WIC and the [...]
Arizona Department of Health Services Honored for Breastfeeding Support
The International Board of Lactation Consultant Examiners (IBLCE) and International Lactation Consultant Association have recognized our department for excellence in lactation care. We received the International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) Care Award in recognition for our staff that hold the prestigious IBCLC, and for providing lactation programs for breastfeeding families. Our department was recognized for our work to help [...]
May 19th National Hepatitis Testing Day
According to new surveillance data from the CDC, almost 20,000 deaths in 2014 were associated with hepatitis C and an increasing number of Americans are developing and dying from liver cancer, which can be caused by hepatitis. A second recently published CDC study shows that hepatitis C related deaths in 2013 surpassed the total combined number of deaths from 60 [...]