Keep Your Kids Safe this Holiday Season by Following Toy Guidelines
As the holiday and gift giving season approaches, it’s important for parents and caregivers to remember to choose toys with care to keep children safe. Keep in mind the child’s age, interests and skill level. Look for quality design and construction in all toys. Make sure that all directions or instructions are clear. And plastic wrappings on toys should be [...]
Vaccines For Children Enrollment
The Vaccines for Children (VFC) Program is a federally funded program that provides vaccines at no cost to children who might not otherwise be vaccinated because of inability to pay. Here at ADHS, we partner with CDC to distribute these vaccines to nearly 900 private vaccine providers and public health clinics throughout the state. Maintaining this network of vaccine providers [...]
Arizona a Top Public Health Preparedness Performer
Public health preparedness is critical to ensure rapid and effective response to emergencies, outbreaks, and disasters. For the last several years, CDC has released a national snapshot of states’ performance on key public health indicators. As we’ve seen year over year, Arizona continues to score high marks on preparedness. Like last year, this year we received a perfect score for [...]
More Foodborne Illness in the National News
Foodborne illness has been in the news again with a norovirus outbreak striking a Chipotle restaurant and sickening over 100 Boston College students. Norovirus is a highly contagious stomach illness that can cause severe stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. It's pretty uncomfortable, but most people start feeling better a day or two after they become sick. However, norovirus can [...]
Arizona publishes first report of concurrent mosquito-borne disease outbreaks
ADHS Office of Infectious Disease Services published a report last week in the CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report describing concurrent outbreaks of West Nile virus and St. Louis encephalitis virus disease in Arizona. These outbreaks occurred from May through October this year, and resulted in over 100 illnesses . Co-outbreaks of these two diseases have not been documented before [...]
Dietetic Interns Gain Knowledge from ADHS Staff
Nineteen Dietetic Interns from Arizona State University recently completed a public health nutrition rotation at the Arizona Department of Health Services. The two-week experience is part an internship which includes more than 1,200 hours of supervised practice required before taking the national exam to become a Registered Dietitian. The interns learned about a variety of public health programs, toured the [...]