Childhood Obesity Awareness Month, September 2013
September is Childhood Obesity Awareness Month and is a great time for us to take stock of where we are in the "Winnable Battle" of combatting obesity. Last month, we got some good news from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that obesity rates in children and adults are leveling off after decades of going up. Now we’ve [...]
Filariasis
I thought I’d do a series on some interesting tropical diseases over the next few weeks. Let’s start with a disease called filariasis- which can cause something called elephantiasis. You’ve probably heard of a disease in dogs called heartworm. It’s caused by tiny thread-like worms called microfilariae. Like many diseases, there’s a similar disease that people living in Africa and [...]
Medical Marijuana Edibles
Last week I posted a blog that points out that the words "Marijuana" in the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act and "Cannabis" in the Arizona Criminal Code have different definitions... and that the distinction may be an important one for Qualifying Patients. The major difference is that the definition of "Useable Marijuana" in AMMA includes “… dried flowers of the marijuana plant, and [...]
Local Suicide Prevention Day Event
We and Magellan Health Services of Arizona will host a webinar-based panel discussion on suicide prevention and intervention entitled "Closing the Gap to Zero Suicides" on World Suicide Prevention Day (Sept. 10). The webinar will feature a panel of leaders from our team, Magellan, and the Veterans Administration. The discussion will run from 10 - 11 a.m. AZ time… followed by [...]
What’s Community Paramedicine?
Community paramedicine is a paradigm shift for the use of paramedics in the US. It’s an emerging model in which paramedics function outside their usual emergency response & transport roles- delving into the world of primary care. As the health care world increasingly shifts toward prevention and well care- the system will increasingly demand more folks that can function in a [...]
CDC Sortable Stats
There’s a new CDC Sortable Stats web application that went live a couple of weeks ago that provides an interactive tool to analyze behavioral risk factors and health indicators compiled from various published CDC and federal sources. You can search by state for things like death rates (e.g. infant mortality, heart disease, motor vehicle death rates, etc.); health burden (e.g. obesity, [...]