General

Arizona Community Profiles Dashboard (Part I of IV)

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:30-07:00September 5th, 2014|General|

We collect all kinds of surveillance about prevalence of disease, birth, causes of death, reasons for hospital visits, smoking rates and hundreds of other indicators to help us assess health indicators and design interventions to improve outcomes. For the first time ever, we now have a tool to explore this data and visualize it in [...]

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e-Book Edition of the “Guide to Clinical Preventive Services”

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:30-07:00September 4th, 2014|General|

For the first time, the US Preventive Services Task Force has released an e-book version of its Guide to Clinical Preventive Services which helps primary care clinicians and patients decide together what preventive services are right for a patient’s needs. The 2014 Guide includes all active Task Force evidence-based recommendations including 28 new and updated [...]

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Vital Records Quality Improvement Team Gets Impressive Results

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:30-07:00September 3rd, 2014|General|

Our Vital Records team handles more than 600 mail-in requests for birth and death certificates each week. The average wait time for mail-in certificates had been nearly 4 weeks...too slow in anybody’s book. Last month we established a cross-functional quality improvement team to find and implement ways to reduce the turnaround time. We now have [...]

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ADHS Recognized for Communication Success

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:30-07:00September 2nd, 2014|General|

Several of our marketing efforts were honored at the National Conference on Health Communication in Atlanta. Our Intranet Re-design, Call 9-1-1 CPR and Cardiac Arrest video, Dairy Made Easy radio ads and Language Access List grabbed the attention of judges from Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. The winners in the [...]

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Two More Medical Marijuana Lawsuits This Week

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:31-07:00August 29th, 2014|General|

A few weeks ago I issued a Director’s Decision authorizing the use of marijuana for medical marijuana patients undergoing conventional treatment for PTSD. Beginning January 1 physician certifications will be valid for palliative care of PTSD symptoms as long as certifying physicians attest that the patient is currently undergoing some kind of conventional treatment for PTSD [...]

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Preventive Services Widget for Clinicians

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:31-07:00August 28th, 2014|General|

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality recently announced the release of the “ePSS widget” - which provides primary care clinicians and health care teams with timely decision support regarding appropriate screening, counseling, and preventive services for their patients. The tool is based on the current, evidence-based recommendations of the US Preventive Services Task Force [...]

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Public Health & the Panama Canal

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:31-07:00August 25th, 2014|General|

The Panama Canal celebrates its 100th anniversary this week. Hailed as both a Wonder of the Modern World and a Monument of the Millennium, the Panama Canal has public health, engineering, and laborers to thank for its completion. You may remember from history class that the construction of the Canal took decades longer than anticipated. [...]

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Healthy Aging Brief

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:31-07:00August 21st, 2014|General|

The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials recently investigated ways in which public health can support healthy aging. The results are now available in an issue brief that outlines key recommendations to help state health agencies support healthy aging, identify collaborative opportunities, and integrate public health and healthy aging.

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The 5th “Vital Sign” & the Painkiller Epidemic (Part IV of V)

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:31-07:00August 20th, 2014|General|

In Parts I, II, and III of this series we established the acute and growing effects that the opiate painkiller epidemic is having in America, and how it has been driven (in part) by aggressive pain management strategies that were implemented since Pain was identified as the 5th Vital Sign. Since then, public health and [...]

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Association v. Causation

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:31-07:00August 18th, 2014|General|

One of the key objectives of public health is to assess the cause of disease or bad outcomes so we can design interventions. In order to do that, we need to be able to tell the difference between when something is actually “causing” an outcome and when the exposure or condition is simply “associated” or [...]

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