Marijuana & Opiates – Recent Study Shows a Link
One of the missing ingredients in medical marijuana has been peer-reviewed science- but there is some out there. Studies are happening across the country to see how marijuana impacts and interacts with other drugs. One small-scale study done by UC San Francisco recently suggests using marijuana with opiates allowed some patients to reduce the amount of opiates needed to manage their pain. This was a small [...]
Personnel Reform
The Personnel Reform bill made some headway this week in the State Legislature. It’s a complicated bill and hasn't been through the full process yet- but I know there’s a lot of interest in it around these parts- so I’ll try to distill the current version down a little bit for our agency. Basically, if you’re Grade 19 or above [...]
Midwifery & the Democratic Process
Here's a short story about using the democratic process to get things done. Some of you might remember a protest last December in front of our 150 Building. About 100 folks or so were carrying placards in front of our building asking us to make it easier to have a home-birth in AZ. Many of you probably didn’t know that ADHS licenses [...]
A New Kind of Whooping Cough?
A team of Aussie scientists from the U of New South Wales believe that a new kind of Whooping Cough bacteria (Bordetella pertussis) has slipped past the protective effects from the current “acellular” vaccine- contributing to an increase in cases being found Down Under. Their study was published this week in the latest The Journal of Infectious Diseases. This doesn't look like [...]
Behavioral Health “RFI”
We had a productive “Request For Information (RFI)” session this week regarding our ”Recovery Through Whole Health, the Regional Behavioral Health Authority with Health Homes” project. About 150 folks attended the session- including potential bidders, members of the behavioral health provider community and peers and family members. We’ll be using the information from the session this week to help us [...]
Our Arizona State Hospital’s “Culture of Care”
We’ve had plans to change how we think about security at the Hospital for the last several months. Our careful planning and organizing is paying off- as we’ve implemented many of our plans already and are turning the key on other reforms in the coming weeks and months. It’s definitely been a busy place at the State Hospital these days- [...]