Making good decisions about prioritizing which public health issues to tackle and how to target our interventions rests on our ability to collect and analyze public health data. For infectious disease surveillance that means have a base of solid reporting and surveillance so we can analyze infectious disease trends. For chronic diseases, we need to [...]
Most likely, family and friends are the lynchpins of your support system. The same is (of course) true for the patients that we serve at the Arizona State Hospital - and encouraging and reinforcing interaction with family and friends is a key to Recovery. An important element in reinforcing family and friend support systems is [...]
As you’ve probably heard over the past couple weeks, we are preparing for our big exercise on Nov. 4. The exercise scenario will prompt public health departments to make decisions about evacuation and sheltering in place. There are lots of factors that come into play when making these decisions. In some situations it may be [...]
Those of you in Licensing have heard me talk about the difference between compliance and enforcement more than once, but it's been awhile since I've written about the subject. Some people are confused about the distinction I always make between compliance and enforcement. They are 2 very different things. Compliance (as it relates to our licensees) [...]
Last week we awarded 4 community-based contracts for the new Personal Responsibility Education Program funds to prevent teen pregnancy in AZ. The funding we’ll be passing through to our new contractors is part of the Affordable Care Act- and requires programs educate adolescents on both abstinence and contraception as ways to prevent pregnancy and STDs. All [...]
The death of any child is a tragedy – for the family and for the community. Almost 20 years ago, an idea was created to systematically review all child deaths in order to find ways to prevent similar deaths going forward. In past years this focus has raised the awareness about child drowning or the [...]
I’ve written several pieces over the last few weeks highlighting our efforts to better integrate primary healthcare into the treatment plans for folks with mental illnesses- but the issue of providing better coordinated care for folks with multiple chronic medical conditions is really far bigger than this integration issue. More than 25% of Americans have multiple [...]
We had a very nice Open House event for the new Arizona State Forensic Units yesterday. The new facility will be a huge help and will be much more conducive to helping our patients on their recovery path. It’ll also really improve the working conditions for our dedicated staff- and will make their mission to help our patients easier. [...]
In less than a month (Nov. 4) thousands of people from a variety of response agencies will be testing their plans and coordinating response efforts for the Vigilant Guard exercise- which will allow us to practice what we would do during a disaster. One of our main tasks will be medical surge management. Medical surge [...]
Ever since 911, there’s been an increased understanding that a strong disaster emergency and evacuation plan is required for any line of business. Child care is no exception. Over the last few months, our Child Care Licensing shop took the lead to develop and provide information and training to Arizona child care providers in effective short- and [...]
