SARS… A 10-Year Retrospective
This Spring marks 10 years since Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) arrived on the global public health scene. It started as a mystery illness in SE Asia- without name, origin, or cure in February of 2003. The CDC immediately began working with the World Health Organization to investigate the outbreak. Public health scientists across the globe scrambled to understand and contain [...]
Rulemaking Stuff
Our Licensing and Rulemaking teams spent the last week of April with hundreds of Stakeholders from numerous associations and licensees about our ongoing regulatory reform effort. In addition, we’ve received hundreds of comments regarding our draft rules for Healthcare Institutions and Behavioral Health Service Agencies on our website (the comment period ended on May 5). Our teams are now busy [...]
Home Baked Goods & Empowering Opportunity
Last year I blogged about a grant sponsored by the Arizona Developmental Disabilities Planning Council to help folks with developmental disabilities and their families become self-employed by starting their own cottage industry food business. At the end of last year, this funding was awarded to the Southwest Autism Research & Resource Center, which has developed a 10-week training course to [...]
State Employee Recognition
The work we do often doesn’t get a lot of fanfare. Much like police who respond to hundreds of calls a week, public health workers diligent work to protect the public from health threats – we just don’t respond with lights and sirens and there aren't any TV shows that celebrate our work. I try to keep you posted about [...]
The “Community Plan”
Strategic community planning is an effective tool to improve population health. That’s why organizations like the Livable Communities Coalition are so important as they help Arizona communities to become places that improve those social and environmental determinants of health that make such a big impact on population health and public health outcomes. But how do you drill public health into [...]
National Campaign Shows Real Dangers of Tobacco Use
Continuing with the success of last year’s landmark national tobacco education campaign- the CDC is launching “Tips from Former Smokers” which will run in Arizona through the end of June. The media campaign showcases the real and devastating effects of smoking & secondhand smoke. The ads feature people with smoking-related health conditions and candidly describe the impact of tobacco and the [...]