September is Childhood Obesity Awareness Month and is a great time for us to take stock of where we are in the "Winnable Battle" of combatting obesity. Last month, we got some good news from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that obesity rates in children and adults are leveling off after decades [...]
I thought I’d do a series on some interesting tropical diseases over the next few weeks. Let’s start with a disease called filariasis- which can cause something called elephantiasis. You’ve probably heard of a disease in dogs called heartworm. It’s caused by tiny thread-like worms called microfilariae. Like many diseases, there’s a similar disease that [...]
Last week I posted a blog that points out that the words "Marijuana" in the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act and "Cannabis" in the Arizona Criminal Code have different definitions... and that the distinction may be an important one for Qualifying Patients. The major difference is that the definition of "Useable Marijuana" in AMMA includes “… dried flowers [...]
We and Magellan Health Services of Arizona will host a webinar-based panel discussion on suicide prevention and intervention entitled "Closing the Gap to Zero Suicides" on World Suicide Prevention Day (Sept. 10). The webinar will feature a panel of leaders from our team, Magellan, and the Veterans Administration. The discussion will run from 10 - 11 [...]
Community paramedicine is a paradigm shift for the use of paramedics in the US. It’s an emerging model in which paramedics function outside their usual emergency response & transport roles- delving into the world of primary care. As the health care world increasingly shifts toward prevention and well care- the system will increasingly demand more folks [...]
There’s a new CDC Sortable Stats web application that went live a couple of weeks ago that provides an interactive tool to analyze behavioral risk factors and health indicators compiled from various published CDC and federal sources. You can search by state for things like death rates (e.g. infant mortality, heart disease, motor vehicle death rates, [...]
Are Marijuana and Cannabis the same thing when it comes to Arizona Law? The short answer is no- and the distinction may be an important one for Qualified Patients. The Arizona Medical Marijuana Act provides registry identification card holders and dispensaries a number of legal protections for their medical use of Marijuana pursuant to the [...]
Tobacco is one of the most difficult addictions to break. A successful tobacco quitter can make on average 10 attempts before they’re able to finally kick the habit. This week we launched Project Quit, a new initiative developed in partnership with the Arizona Smokers Helpline a.k.a. ASHLine to showcase the tobacco quit process. Project Quit follows [...]
Building Arizona’s inventory of primary care providers has been a priority of ours for many years- and it’s increasingly important as we move toward Medicaid restoration. As one of our many initiatives in our Bureau of Health Systems Development, our Workforce Program hosted a presentation to Physician Assistant students at the NAU Phoenix campus last [...]
Three of the petitions to add debilitating conditions to the medical marijuana program that we received last month will be moving forward to a public hearing, which will be on Tuesday, October 29 from 9 am to noon in our State Lab conference room. We'll also broadcast the hearing via Livestream. The petitions are for PTSD, Migraines, [...]
