Our Division of Behavioral Health Services recently submitted its combined mental health and substance abuse prevention and treatment services State Plan for FY 12-13 to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The Plan that we submitted doubles as the State Plan that’s required by ARS 36-550.01. The Plan provides an overview of Arizona’s [...]
Another article came out this week in the journal Pediatrics that points toward the importance of preconception health including maintaining a healthy weight before and during pregnancy. The authors explored the relationship between metabolic disorders like diabetes, hypertension, and obesity and outcomes such as autism and other developmental delays. They found an association between metabolic [...]
Our Physical Activity and Nutrition and Child Care Licensing programs were selected for a national award from Let’s Move!- Child Care for our outstanding work to promote young children’s health and prevent childhood obesity through the Empower program and our training videos. Our work will be showcased at the May 9 Let’s Move! Child Care [...]
This week marks the 50th anniversary of National Poison Prevention Week. For the first time ever- poisoning surpassed car crashes as the number one cause of injury deaths in AZ and more than 2,000 kids had to go to emergency rooms last year from unintentional poisoning. Kids under 5 had the highest rates of non-fatal emergency department visits from poisoning. For more [...]
The Institute of Medicine just released a consensus report called "Primary Care and Public Health: Promoting Integration to Improve Population Health" that identified several principles that public health and primary care could work toward further integration- including the goals of population health improvement, aligned leadership, sustainability, community engagement, and the collaborative use of data and analysis. Check it out and send the [...]
Magellan of AZ & their behavioral health providers (and of course our DBHS shop) have been collaborating to develop and update an innovative provider outcomes dashboards to make a transparent window into the effectiveness of the behavioral health system based on core metrics. The recently updated online dashboards provide great info to the folks that we serve and their [...]
Our Bureau of Women's and Children's Health team released the Arizona Women's Health Status Report recently. The report details how Arizona women are doing toward achieving optimal health and wellness. Topics covered in the report include physical activity, oral health, mental health, access to care and general wellness. The good news is that 83% of [...]
The behavioral health system transformation that we’re working on as part of the Maricopa County behavioral health services contract will go a long way toward better integrating primary and acute care and behavioral healthcare for folks with a serious mental illness. But… our success is also dependent on our regulatory reform within our Licensing shop. In fact, [...]
Every year each of the folks in my job around the country (called the State Health Officers) get together and elect a President of our association (called the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials or ASTHO). Each President picks a public health challenge during his or her term. This year’s ASTHO President is Dr. [...]
One of the missing ingredients in medical marijuana has been peer-reviewed science- but there is some out there. Studies are happening across the country to see how marijuana impacts and interacts with other drugs. One small-scale study done by UC San Francisco recently suggests using marijuana with opiates allowed some patients to reduce the amount of opiates needed to [...]
