Federal Funds for Arizona Public Health
We use a lot of CDC grants in Arizona to promote public health. I’ve talked about what we do with the Maternal and Child Health, as well as the Behavioral Health, grants in previous blogs. There’s another grant that lets us focus on issues that are specifically tailored to Arizona. The Preventive Health block grant helps fund our skin cancer prevention, rape prevention [...]
National Nurses Week & the Harlem Shake
Anybody that has worked in the healthcare industry knows who's the backbone of care: Nurses. Last week we celebrated nurses with National Nurses Week. We have many nurses throughout the Department in various divisions. Each nurse provides a distinct service to the Department. The majority of our nurses work at the AZ State Hospital providing direct care to the patients [...]
American Indian Healthcare Matrix (Part II)
Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll continue my series on the healthcare matrix for American Indians. Last week I covered the basics of the Indian Health Service. This week’s write-up is about something called “638's”. Tribes and Tribal Organizations can elect to administer healthcare services that normally would be administered by the IHS. This option is available under Public [...]
American Indian Healthcare Matrix (Part I)
Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be writing a series on the healthcare matrix for American Indians. I’ll be covering the basics of the Indian Health Service, how Medicaid and Medicare interface with Native Americans, as well as some of the basics of the Affordable Care Act as it relates to American Indians. Let’s start with the Indian Health [...]
Newborn Screening & Immunizations Law
House Bill 2491 has been in the media and became a law with the Governor’s signature. The new law requires us to add critical congenital heart defect (CCHD) to our newborn screening program protocol. This new screening and reporting requirement will kick in once our rulemaking is complete- probably this Fall. The screening test we'll be adding is a pulse-ox test [...]
“People First” Law
A few years ago, the legislature made some important changes to the language in our state laws by removing hurtful words related to people with developmental disabilities. Last year, the legislature removed some really old definitions and terms related to mental illness. This year a new law was passed and signed (HB 2667) that went through all sections of Arizona statutes [...]