This Week’s Ebola Preparedness Work
We held our first Governor’s Council on Infectious Disease Preparedness and Response meeting late last week. The Council outlined 2 priorities…identifying a hospital or hospitals in Arizona that would be responsible for treating any Ebola patient, and improving outreach to physicians across the state to ensure that they have the information needed to effectively identify patients that may be suspect [...]
Post-Arrival Monitoring Underway
This week the CDC began providing us with a daily listing of people arriving in Arizona from Ebola affected countries. This is valuable information because it allows us to more quickly and easily identify suspect cases of Ebola right away-before community exposures occur. This week we received information about a handful of low-risk people that are in Arizona after having returned [...]
Halloween Safety
As we make our way home from work and school tomorrow, neighborhoods will be filled with goblins, ghosts and superheroes. It’s a night kids look forward to all year, so we need to do our part to make sure Arizona kids have a safe Halloween. The most important thing you can do to keep kids safe is to slow down. [...]
Federal Program Helps Recruit Doctors in Underserved Areas
Arizona needs more doctors to help take care of our residents’ various health issues but we are challenged with recruiting enough especially in the rural communities. The National Health Service Corps has a program called the Student to Service Loan Repayment Program which is designed to attract newly trained physicians to work in rural, underserved areas. The program allows 4th [...]
City Health Commissioners Raise Awareness of Prescription Drug Overdose
The National Association of City and County Health Officers Big Cities Health Coalition recently held a standing-room-only Congressional briefing on prescription drug abuse and overdose. The briefing focused on local policy successes, challenges, and solutions to help save lives. Click here to learn more about the Big Cities Health Coalition, projects they are currently engaged in, and to watch a [...]
Melanoma Reporting
Melanoma skin cancer is the deadliest form of skin cancer. Many believe that Arizona has similar age adjusted incidence rates to Australia, the world’s highest rate. But during the middle of the last decade, the Arizona Cancer Registry data showed a puzzling decline in cancer rates. The AZ Melanoma Task Force to look at the cause. The task force consists [...]