Healthy Homes
For decades, removing lead (Pb) from the environment has been a public health priority because residual contamination from decades of using products containing harmful lead continued to cause health problems. Fortunately, the public health interventions (removing Pb from gas, paint, and cans) worked and today 99.9% of Arizona kids have blood lead levels below the standard. As a result, the CDC has [...]
Behavioral Health Kicking the Habit
For the past 16 months, our folks in the Division of Behavioral health and our Bureau of Tobacco and Chronic Disease and ASHline have been working to train clinical behavioral health staff in Maricopa and Pima Counties on how to get folks into smoking cessation (quit) services. The overall goal of this collaboration was to establish a systemic change within the [...]
Own your Own Health Data
For years, you’ve heard that you should take your health care into your own hands It may soon be easier – the federal Health and Human Services Secretary wants you to be able to access your electronic health care records. One key argument to give people access is if they know what is there, they will ask better questions or [...]
Hospital Pass Reboot
Back in June a resident of our Arizona Community Protection and Treatment Center (ACPTC) (one of our civilly committed sex offenders) escaped while he was on an approved pass to go to church. He was found by Tempe police later that day. Because of the security issues that the event raised, I asked the staff at the ACPTC and the Forensic [...]
Contagion
In all my years in public health this is the first crack I’ve taken at being a movie critic- so give me a little slack on this one. I checked out the new movie called Contagion- and really liked it. I won’t give up too much information and spoil the film, but it’s basically a fictional drama that portrays CDC and [...]
Who is Louis Pasteur?
In 1862, a French chemist named Louis Pasteur discovered that heat kills germs in liquids, preventing bacterial growth, food spoilage and foodborne illnesses. He used his discovery to invent methods that have been used for the last 150 years as a sanitary treatment for milk – which at the time was a prime source of TB. His experiment? He exposed boiled broths to air in [...]