Colby Bower will serve as our Interim Assistant Director for Licensing while we recruit and hire a permanent Assistant Director. Colby has been serving as our Legislative Affairs chief for the last couple of years. Colby fills several of the criteria that we needed for the interim post: 1) He’s a good risk manager and [...]
The Governor signed the budget this week - here's a look at how some of it affects public health: Behavioral Health Services for folks that don’t Qualify for Medicaid The budget that was just signed includes about $39M in new funding for services for folks with a serious mental illness that don’t qualify for Medicaid. [...]
One of the outstanding legal uncertainties regarding our implementation of AZ Medical Marijuana Act has been the Compassion First v. Brewer lawsuit that challenged our authority to require future dispensaries to have a Medical Director. We’ve always thought dispensary medical direction was a key component to making sure that future dispensaries act in the best [...]
“Promoting Health and Wellness for all Arizonans" is the motto of the Arizona Department of Health Services. We promote and protect the health of Arizona's children and adults and set the standard for personal and community health through direct care, science, public policy and leadership. Want a piece of the action? We’re looking for an [...]
Obesity, injury prevention, teen pregnancy, and substance abuse are all border health priorities. Our prevention team put together an inventory identifying current programs addressing these priority areas in AZs border communities. Our WIC program and Arizona Nutrition Network reach thousands of low-income women and kids along the border- improving nutrition and reducing obesity. Programs like our Sexual Violence Prevention & Education and Safe Kids [...]
As part of our strategic plan, we name 5 winnable battles to prioritize over the next 1-3 years. While not de-emphasizing work in other areas, this is an important effort to achieve measurable impact quickly in a few targeted areas. We’ve identified five areas as key domestic winnable battles for improving our state’s health, based [...]
We published our 2011 ADHS Annual Report this week. Rather than reproduce all of our activities in narrative form- we used a summary approach this year that incorporates a lot of “hot links” to more information about our achievements.
CDC released their new National Action Plan for Preventing Child Injury this week. The goals of the National Action Plan are to raise awareness about the problem of child injuries and the effects on our nation, offer solutions by uniting stakeholders around a common set of goals and strategies, and mobilize action to reduce child [...]
Our interdisciplinary team completed a major milestone this week- by developing an initial rough draft of what will become the Scope of Work that will be included in the upcoming Request for Proposal for the behavioral health (and acute care) services in Maricopa County. This effort has taken literally thousands of staff hours to put together- and [...]
You might remember that the Arizona Biomedical Research Commission was transferred to the ADHS last legislative session. We officially became responsible for the Commission in July of 2011. My first priorities were to get a clear analysis of the “books” (e.g. the financial records etc.), get a handle on the outstanding research projects that the Commission [...]
