Last January 8th, the world was horrified by the events in Tucson Arizona. A mass shooting in a supermarket parking lot on a Saturday morning – 19 people shot, 6 died. As tragic as this event was, it could have been worse had the emergency medical care providers and trauma team not been prepared. It [...]
More than 2,000 kids ended up in AZ emergency rooms from accidental poisoning last year. Kids 5 and younger had the highest rates of non-fatal ER visits from accidental poisoning. Nationally, more than 60,000 young children end up in emergency rooms because they got into medicines while their parent or caregiver wasn't looking. The new Up and Away and Out of Sight educational [...]
Our prevention and county health folks will be spending more time working to help counties, schools, and communities to adopt policies that will reduce obesity, chronic disease and disparities. One area of focus will be Border Health where the objectives include reducing motor vehicle accidents and substance abuse. There will also be more going on [...]
Life is a precious gift. None of us knows long our gift will last, so it’s important to make the most of every day. That means doing everything you can to stay healthy by eating well and exercising regularly. A lot of folks will say – I’m stuck with my health because of my genes, [...]
Looking forward, 2012 is going to be another busy year for all of us. During the last Deputy/Assistant Director meeting, managers shared the biggest priorities for the next six months and I will share a few of the highlights throughout this week in our blog. One key focus that echoed throughout everyone’s summary was an [...]
Public health efforts eradicated smallpox from the globe in the late 1970s. The last naturally occurring case was in Somalia in 1977 (followed by a couple of lab accident cases in 1978). Public health’s sites have been set on Polio eradication for the last couple of decades. We got close a couple of times, but [...]
I started my career in public health inspecting restaurants, motels and the like in the mid- 1980s. My area was right around here down toward South Mountain- and I inspected the cafeteria in the basement of the Executive Tower and the cafeteria that used to be on the 4th floor of the 1740 building. It doesn’t seem [...]
Last legislative session, the Legislature and Governor made a statutory change that moved the AZ Biomedical Research Commission to our agency. The Commission basically awards contracts for research projects that translate into interventions to save lives. Our funding (a few million dollars per year) comes from tobacco taxes and some lottery funds. Shoana Anderson has volunteered to serve as [...]
The State Hospital has a new front door, at least on the Internet. Cory Nelson and Jesse Lewis spearheaded the effort to update the hospital’s homepage. Jesse worked with Gannon Wegner to punch out the project. The new landing page makes it a lot easier to find hospital info- everything from patient and family info, to [...]
Looking for a book to read over the holidays about one of public health’s biggest achievements? You’ll enjoy a new book written by Dr. Bill Foege called House on Fire: The Fight to Eradicate Smallpox. Dr. Foege was a key leader in the smallpox eradication effort. He joined the CDC in 1962 in the Epidemic Intelligence Service [...]
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