Tribal Legislative Day to Focus on Suicide Prevention
Since 1995, the Arizona Commission of Indian Affairs, in cooperation with representatives from the state's Indian nations, hosts an Indian Nations and Tribes Legislative Day. This year’s event will focus on the health and wellness of native youth and will take place Tuesday, January 20th on the Capitol lawn in Phoenix. This year’s program will include a panel discussion on [...]
Intervention Snapshot: SBIRT
Through our Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) grant, folks are given a brief assessment which inquires as to individual’s substance use in primary care and emergency room settings. People who screen positive (or who are self-referred) are able to access an array of treatment services. In general, services can be grouped into seven categories: Crisis, Support, Inpatient, [...]
Influenza Now Widespread in Arizona
By now, it’s likely you know someone who’s gotten the flu this year. Last week, Arizona joined the ranks of 46 other states that are having “widespread” influenza activity. We’ve had 2,316 cases reported so far this season, with 761 of those being reported in the last week. That’s 130% more cases than this time last year. With H3N2 the [...]
Medical Marijuana Sales Tripled in 2014
We published our end-of-year annual medical marijuana report this week. Dispensary marijuana sales were three times higher than in 2013. Dispensaries sold over 9 metric tons (about 10 US tons) of marijuana in 2014 for an estimated gross revenue of about $110M. There were 1,433,808 individual sales in ‘14 (among the 55,000 patients), with an average of 26 transactions/patient/year. The [...]
Ebola Epidemic Index Case Identified?
A 2 year-old boy from Guinea appears to be what we call in our business the “Index Case” for the West African Ebola epidemic. In epidemiology, an Index Case is the first documented case of an illness that spreads to others. The 2 year-old appears to have been infected by playing in a hollow tree that housed a colony of [...]
Arizona’s Paramedic Training: Excellent Results
Arizona’s Paramedic training programs are taught by a combination of colleges, private training centers, and fire departments. A typical Paramedic course is over 1,000 hours of class room, hospital and ambulance time covering anatomy, physiology, pathophysiology, pharmacology, terminology, and hours and hours of assessment and proficiency tests on a multitude of skills. To become certified as a Paramedic in Arizona, [...]