State Hospital Web Refresh
The State Hospital has a new front door, at least on the Internet. Cory Nelson and Jesse Lewis spearheaded the effort to update the hospital’s homepage. Jesse worked with Gannon Wegner to punch out the project. The new landing page makes it a lot easier to find hospital info- everything from patient and family info, to employment opportunities, fact sheets, visitation [...]
House on Fire: The Fight to Eradicate Smallpox
Looking for a book to read over the holidays about one of public health’s biggest achievements? You’ll enjoy a new book written by Dr. Bill Foege called House on Fire: The Fight to Eradicate Smallpox. Dr. Foege was a key leader in the smallpox eradication effort. He joined the CDC in 1962 in the Epidemic Intelligence Service program and worked as an [...]
Behavioral Health State Plan Released
Our Division of Behavioral Health Services recently submitted its combined mental health and substance abuse prevention and treatment services State Plan for FY 12-13 to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The Plan that we submitted to SAMHSA doubles as the State Plan that’s required by ARS 36-550.01. The Plan provides an overview of Arizona’s behavioral health prevention, early identification, [...]
Web-Based EMT Certification Coming Soon
As our IT team was developing the electronic medical marijuana application tool they started seeing that the code they were writing had potential uses in other parts of the agency. In other words- that the basics of the Code could be used to electronify some of our other business lines. We looked for areas that consumed the most manual labor and [...]
Acing the Preparedness Test
Disease detection and swift and effective public health interventions are essential to saving lives in a public health emergency. According to a new report from the CDC on Public Health Preparedness, Arizona's public health system is ready and well-prepared. The CDC report outlines the Department’s ability to detect and respond to a wide range of public health threats including our ability [...]
Sharpening the Axe
There's a well-known quote attributed to Abe Lincoln that goes something like this: "Give me 6 hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first 4 sharpening the axe." Maybe somebody will someday quote me as saying: "Give us 20 months to transform the delivery of behavioral health and primary care services to address the health disparities among folks with [...]