National Poison Prevention Week
This week marks the 50th anniversary of National Poison Prevention Week. For the first time ever- poisoning surpassed car crashes as the number one cause of injury deaths in AZ and more than 2,000 kids had to go to emergency rooms last year from unintentional poisoning. Kids under 5 had the highest rates of non-fatal emergency department visits from poisoning. For more information on poisoning in Arizona, [...]
Integrating Public Health & Primary Care
The Institute of Medicine just released a consensus report called "Primary Care and Public Health: Promoting Integration to Improve Population Health" that identified several principles that public health and primary care could work toward further integration- including the goals of population health improvement, aligned leadership, sustainability, community engagement, and the collaborative use of data and analysis. Check it out and send the link along to your Stakeholders.
Behavioral Health Dashboard Refresh
Magellan of AZ & their behavioral health providers (and of course our DBHS shop) have been collaborating to develop and update an innovative provider outcomes dashboards to make a transparent window into the effectiveness of the behavioral health system based on core metrics. The recently updated online dashboards provide great info to the folks that we serve and their families… but also to the [...]
AZ Women’s Health Status Report
Our Bureau of Women's and Children's Health team released the Arizona Women's Health Status Report recently. The report details how Arizona women are doing toward achieving optimal health and wellness. Topics covered in the report include physical activity, oral health, mental health, access to care and general wellness. The good news is that 83% of Arizona women report having good [...]
Behavioral Health Licensing Regulatory Reform
The behavioral health system transformation that we’re working on as part of the Maricopa County behavioral health services contract will go a long way toward better integrating primary and acute care and behavioral healthcare for folks with a serious mental illness. But… our success is also dependent on our regulatory reform within our Licensing shop. In fact, our current Rulemaking process to [...]
National Healthy Babies Initiative
Every year each of the folks in my job around the country (called the State Health Officers) get together and elect a President of our association (called the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials or ASTHO). Each President picks a public health challenge during his or her term. This year’s ASTHO President is Dr. David Lakey, and he’s selected [...]