19 Kids to Miss a Month of School
A 4th grader in Gilbert was diagnosed with the mumps last week. Had all the staff and faculty in the school been previously vaccinated for the mumps at the school- it really would’ve been no big deal. But, it turns out that 19 kids at the school hadn’t been vaccinated for the mumps (mainly because their parents chose to sign [...]
Enjoy AZ’s 100th B-day
Please take some time to enjoy Arizona’s 100th birthday celebration this week. The Arizona Centennial Commission held Arizona Best Fest this past Saturday and Sunday. There’ll also be a host of events going on tomorro (AZ’s actual 100th Birthday) in the Capitol mall area- especially the area between the House and Senate buildings just across the street from us. Our [...]
Arizona Mexico Commission Progress
I’m writing this from my hotel room in Rocky Point- after a long day (and night) of the inter Plenary Session. The 2 day conference started Thursday and goes through tonight. We meet twice a year- it’s basically an opportunity for us to form partnerships across the border and to develop regional approaches to things like valley fever surveillance, burn patient [...]
Recovery Through Whole Health RFI
We’ll be having a “Request For Information” session regarding our “ Recovery Through Whole Health, the Regional Behavioral Health Authority with Health Homes” project (a.k.a. the upcoming Request for Proposal for behavioral health services in Maricopa County) on March 21 from 1- 5 pm at the Radisson City Center at 3600 N. 2nd Ave. in Phoenix. We’ll have more details about the [...]
Neglected Global Tropical Disease Initiative
Last week marked an important milestone toward better controlling 10 neglected tropical diseases by 2020. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank, 13 pharmaceutical companies, the U.S., U.K. and U.A.E. governments and other global health organizations announced a new, coordinated push to defeat diseases like Dengue, rabies, blinding trachoma, Buruli ulcer, endemic treponematoses (yaws), leprosy (Hansen disease), Chagas disease, sleeping sickness, leishmaniasis, cysticercosis dracunculiasis (guinea-worm disease),echinococcosis, foodborne trematode [...]
Public Health Preparedness Milestone
Back in 2008 we set the ambitious goal of becoming a “Public Health Ready” state- and we’ve worked hard over the last 3 years or so to accomplish our goal. We made it last month- and Arizona became one of only a couple of states to have all county health departments recognized by Project Public Health Ready (PPHR). The program [...]