AZ Aces Latest CDC Public Health Preparedness Report Card
Arizona continues to score high marks on preparedness according to a CDC report released this week. We got a perfect score this year for biological laboratory testing, and we’ve kept our excellent performance measures for incident management, public information, and medical countermeasures. Our response times for activating our emergency operation center have been well above the national target for the [...]
Behavioral Health Transition Going Smooth
As Cory mentioned in his blog awhile back, our award of the Maricopa County integrated behavioral health services contract to Mercy Maricopa Integrated Care (Mercy Maricopa) was affirmed and the Stay on transition activities was lifted a few weeks ago. Magellan elected to exercise their right to additional due process and has filed a Motion in Superior Court asking for additional review of [...]
Now Accepting Applications for Loan Repayment Programs
Getting access to primary care providers is critical to disease prevention. The problem is that there aren’t enough primary care providers nationwide. Arizona is short by about 300 primary care physicians, 250 dentists and about 70 psychiatrists. That’s why Arizona has been aggressive in their efforts to recruit providers to work in Arizona, specifically in rural underserved areas. Programs like [...]
50th Anniversary Surgeon General Report on Smoking
The new Surgeon General’s report on smoking called The Health Consequences of Smoking—50 Years of Progress: A Report of the Surgeon General adds diabetes, colorectal and liver cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, erectile dysfunction, age-related macular degeneration, and other conditions to the list of diseases that cigarette smoking causes. The report (released this week) concludes that secondhand smoke exposure is now known [...]
Public Health Initiatives for Refugees in AZ
Last year 3,663 refugees resettled in Arizona from 45 different countries (about 1/3 were from Iraq). Refugees have a variety of pressing social, economic and health needs when they arrive. That’s where our ADHS Refugee Health Program comes in. Our Refugee Health Coordinator, Zachary Holden, works with partners to ensure that refugees arrive healthy and maintain good health as they establish their [...]
New Abortion Clinic Regulations Established
HB 2036 was passed and signed during the 2012 legislative session… tasking the ADHS with several things related to the regulation of abortions. Among them were requirements for us to: 1) Develop a parental informed consent form for minors seeking an abortion; 2) Establish a website with information identified in the Statute; and 3) Require abortion clinics to post signs [...]