Moms & Kids
It’s time for our Bureau of Women’s & Children’s Health and our Office of Children with Special Health Care Needs to complete their annual application for the Maternal and Child Health Title V Block Grant. When you hear “Title V”, people are talking about our maternal and child health prevention programs. These programs work with other state agencies and community [...]
“Be SunWise & Play Sun Smart”
Aksel Laudon, a 6th-grade student at Kyrene Centennial Middle School in Phoenix, is this year’s “Be SunWise and Play Sun Smart” poster-drawing contest winner. Aksel’s drawing was selected by the Arizona Diamondbacks from more than 7,000 student poster entries. Aksel and his teacher Jeffrey Garrett, and their families will be celebrated at the June 5 DBacks game in a pre-game award ceremony on the Jumbotron. Aksel’s drawing will be [...]
AZ Cancer Registry Scores Gold
Our Arizona Cancer Registry scored a coveted Gold rating from the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR) this week for having complete and accurate data suitable for calculating complete and accurate incidence statistics. We’ve received Silver ratings for the last several years- but this year we got the Gold for our increased its data completeness and for evaluating and refocusing [...]
The Texas Sharpshooter
There’s an old tale about a Texas “Sharpshooter” that pulls his pistol out of his holster and shoots at the broad side of a barn pretty much at random without aiming. Then he goes up to the barn with a paintbrush and draws a circle around the bullet holes and says: “See, I have perfect aim”. That’s kinda how a lot [...]
Behavioral Health Licensing Rulemaking Update
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts- we’re in the beginning phases of overhauling our regulations for licensing behavioral health facilities. This’ll be a long process- and the finish line is in mid-2013. We’re starting with a set of what we’ll call “straw-man” language that we can use as a way to start the discussions. We’ve delivered the initial language for [...]
Smoke Free AZ Turns 5
It’s hard to believe- but our Smoke Free Arizona program turned 5 this month. Voters approved the Act back in November of ’06 by a few percentage points. The Initiative language gave us a super-short turn-around time (just like medical marijuana)… and we turned the key on the program by May of ’07. Implementation of the Initiative was smooth from the [...]