Strategic Planning and Public Health Accreditation News
As a follow up to my email earlier this month introducing you to the agency-wide efforts around accreditation and presentations of the draft strategic map, I'm happy to formally announce our new mission and vision: To improve the health and wellness of people and communities in Arizona (our Mission) and Health and Wellness for all Arizonans (our Vision). These two small sentences [...]
Turning the Key on New Child Care Home Rules
We turned the key last week on our new rules for child care homes (child care homes provide “pay” child care between 5 and 10 kids). The new rules officially went into effect on September 30. We crafted the new rules to go hand in hand with SB 1315, which outlines the standards for child care homes. The new rules eliminate [...]
New Public Health Prevention Grant Award
Great news! The CDC gave us a heads up this week that AZ will be receiving a new $842,000 Chronic Disease Prevention & Health Promotion grant. While all states were guaranteed $300,000 on a non-competitive basis, we successfully competed for a supplemental award. We’ll be able to be able to address the leading causes of chronic disease death in Arizona [...]
Our Biggest Exercise Ever
We’re partnering with the AZ Division of Emergency Management to conduct the biggest preparedness exercise ever to be held in Arizona. It’s called the 2011 Arizona ”Vigilant Guard” Exercise. It’ll involve around 5,000 folks from various backgrounds including emergency management, public health, health care, law enforcement, fire, military, and the private sector. The exercise will be based on a flooding event [...]
Run with the Herd
Pretty much everybody knows that getting an annual influenza vaccine protects them from getting influenza- but fewer people realize that getting vaccinated saves other people’s lives as well. That’s because if a large percentage of the population takes advantage of the vaccine (called herd immunity) we can reduce the overall spread of the disease- and save the lives of vulnerable folks [...]
AZ HIV Surveillance Hits the Mark
Arizona’s HIV surveillance hit the mark in the latest CDC national Incidence report. Arizona led the nation in testing and treatment completeness and test results. We’re very proud to have published the first ever Arizona specific HIV incidence estimate which is now posted on our website.