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.
What’s HPV Anyway?
Issues regarding the vaccine that prevents infection with the human papillomavirus (also called HPV) have been in the news lately- so I thought I’d do a thumbnail sketch on it this week. HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection. Most people with HPV don’t have symptoms or health problems from it- and 90% of the time the body’s immune system clears it [...]
Looking to the Horizon
I’m proud of a ton of things that we’ve accomplished for the folks of Arizona over the last 2 ½ years together. Two of the things that I’m most proud of has been our collective ability to think clearly about ways that we can achieve better health outcomes in Arizona using creative thinking, enthusiasm and elbow grease. The combination of [...]