ADHS SWAT Team Strikes
Last week the ASH Pharmacy began having problems with the computer system that the medical staff use to order prescriptions for patients. Orders weren’t consistently showing up on the pharmacy computer screen or printing out. We implemented our back-up system right away, but the temporary work-around was time consuming. Our Information Technology team made this their highest priority to figure out [...]
5 Years of Behavioral Health Innovation Paying Dividends (Part I)
People with a serious mental illness die more than 30 years earlier than people without those challenges. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be reflecting about some of the innovative strategies that we’ve implemented with our behavioral health community partners over the last several years to improve the health status of folks with a serious mental illness. I’ll start with [...]
FDA Approves Painkiller Overdose Field Treatment
It’s no secret that misuse and abuse of opiate painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin are a large and growing public health threat in Arizona- misuse and abuse of these medicines are now killing more Arizonans than car crashes. Last week the FDA approved a prescription treatment called Evzio that can be used in medical emergencies caused by prescription opiates or heroin. It’s approved [...]
More Arizona Parents Choosing Not to Vaccinate their Kids
As I mentioned in a blog post last year, more AZ parents are choosing not to vaccinate their kids- using “personal exemptions” when they enroll their kids in school. This has jeopardized our immunization rates enough that this week’s measles case in Maricopa County could spread. We’ll know in a couple of weeks. Vaccinating yourself and your kids is more about [...]
Epidemiologists: Public Health’s Smoke-Jumpers
Like a hotshot team, a rapid response by public health is essential to stopping the spread of measles in unvaccinated persons… and disease detectives in Maricopa County are currently working to squash a measles outbreak right now. Last week a person with measles visited a restaurant, church and airport in Arizona, exposing over a thousand people to measles. Press releases [...]
Let’s Get Screened
Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in Arizona. Across men and women, all age groups, races, and ethnicities, about ½ of all colorectal cancer diagnoses in Arizona are late-stage, which are more difficult to treat. Our Fit at Fifty HealthCheck Program screens about 1,500 Arizonans per year by providing Fecal Immunochemical Tests and colonoscopies for individuals who [...]