Back in June a resident of our Arizona Community Protection and Treatment Center (ACPTC) (one of our civilly committed sex offenders) escaped while he was on an approved pass to go to church. He was found by Tempe police later that day. Because of the security issues that the event raised, I asked the staff [...]
In all my years in public health this is the first crack I’ve taken at being a movie critic- so give me a little slack on this one. I checked out the new movie called Contagion- and really liked it. I won’t give up too much information and spoil the film, but it’s basically a fictional [...]
In 1862, a French chemist named Louis Pasteur discovered that heat kills germs in liquids, preventing bacterial growth, food spoilage and foodborne illnesses. He used his discovery to invent methods that have been used for the last 150 years as a sanitary treatment for milk – which at the time was a prime source of TB. His experiment? He exposed [...]
Ever wandered about your family tree? Electra Anderson recently started doing some research and was able to find all 13 of her dad’s siblings birth certificates using a resource developed at ADHS by Keith Laubham with nothing but some ingenuity. It’s called http://genealogy.az.gov/. Compared to other states, this site is the easiest and most versatile to search. This [...]
Some of my most memorable moments of elementary school are about things that happened at lunchtime. Back in the day, lunchtime lasted just as long as all the other periods. It’s still that way in some places- but in others lunch hasn’t been competing for time as successfully with the other academic priorities. The School [...]
Our behavioral health licensing team gets complaints from many sources- but seldom do we read about potentially dangerous conditions in the newspaper. But that’s just what happened earlier this month. Our licensing team awoke to read an article in a local newspaper in which the operator stated that they had laid off their clinical director, nurse, [...]
Over the last decade the Labor Day weekend has become one of the most dangerous weekends for car crashes (along with 4th of July and Thanksgiving weekends)… so this weekend is a great time to think road safety. Arizona has decreased the death rate from car, truck and motorcycle crashes by almost 50% in the last 5 years- [...]
The ADHS’ Arizona Biomedical Research Commission has submitted over 66 patent requests worldwide, and has been granted 9 patents within the US in collaboration with ASU and the U of A. The Commission has 22 patent requests published or pending in 7 different countries. Many of the granted patents are anti-cancer compounds. The ABRC continues to [...]
Much of what we do in public health depends on the system seeking out “leverage” meaning designing interventions that have high impact with minimal cost. Malena Bazurto and the Apache County Health District recently won a national award for her creative idea incorporating leverage. Malena noticed that St. John’s had little walk-able space for folks to get [...]
Last summer we applied for funding from the CDC under the Climate-Ready Initiative to develop the Extreme Weather and Public Health materials. The program is focusing on heat related illnesses and ways to increase knowledge of healthy responses to excessive heat situations. The program worked with Kate Hoy and Dallas Teat to produce a training [...]
