Draft New Abortion Clinic Regulations
A state law (HB 2036) was passed and signed awhile back that tasked us with several things related to the regulation of abortions in AZ. Among them were provisions directing us to develop a parental informed consent form for minors and establish a website with a host of information identified in the statute. Our next task is to conduct a [...]
Rural Metro’s October Update
We’ve been monitoring the response times for the big ambulance service provider - Rural Metro – since they went into bankruptcy in August. They have 13 different ambulance services in Arizona and we want to make sure that they're meeting the grade during their reorganization. We asked them to send us monthly reports on their response times in each ambulance district. We've seen [...]
This is An Exercise
Arizona’s public health and healthcare system teamed up with the ADHS including our Bureau of Public Health Emergency Preparedness and the Arizona Division of Emergency Management last week in one of the largest preparedness exercises of the year. The objective was to test and build preparedness capabilities across the emergency management system in AZ. More than 3,000 public health players tested the [...]
Empowering the El Congreso Internacional de Promoción de la Salud
I was fortunate to attend the 2nd annual “El Congreso Internacional de Promoción de la Salud (CIPS)” last week in Hermosillo. There were more than 400 public health attendees from 17 countries at the conference. I presented our pre-school Empower program…. which empowers kids to make good choices about nutrition, physical activity, and tobacco using age-appropriate vehicles including costumed characters and a coloring book. My presentation focused on 10 [...]
Trans Fats on the Way Out?
The FDA made a preliminary determination that partially hydrogenated oils (the primary dietary source of trans fat in processed foods) are not "generally recognized as safe" for use in food. Their review of the research has led them to conclude that consuming trans fat raises LDL, or "bad" cholesterol, and increases the risk of coronary heart disease. The FDA opened a 60-day comment period this week. Folks can submit [...]
Newborn Screening Rulemaking
Our Newborn Screening Program ensures that each newborn is tested for 28 inherited disorders and hearing problems. The goal is to help kids avoid illness, developmental delays and even death by quickly identifying problems and swiftly letting their doctors know so they can implement interventions. On any given day our newborn screening team tests from 600 to 1,500 bloodspot samples [...]