Going the Extra Mile
Our behavioral health licensing team gets complaints from many sources- but seldom do we read about potentially dangerous conditions in the newspaper. But that’s just what happened earlier this month. Our licensing team awoke to read an article in a local newspaper in which the operator stated that they had laid off their clinical director, nurse, therapist and four caregivers; all [...]
Holiday weekends call for extra care when driving
Over the last decade the Labor Day weekend has become one of the most dangerous weekends for car crashes (along with 4th of July and Thanksgiving weekends)… so this weekend is a great time to think road safety. Arizona has decreased the death rate from car, truck and motorcycle crashes by almost 50% in the last 5 years- but crashes are still the [...]
The Arizona Biomedical Research Commission Patent Factoid
The ADHS’ Arizona Biomedical Research Commission has submitted over 66 patent requests worldwide, and has been granted 9 patents within the US in collaboration with ASU and the U of A. The Commission has 22 patent requests published or pending in 7 different countries. Many of the granted patents are anti-cancer compounds. The ABRC continues to collaborate with Arizona researchers to [...]
Leverage
Much of what we do in public health depends on the system seeking out “leverage” meaning designing interventions that have high impact with minimal cost. Malena Bazurto and the Apache County Health District recently won a national award for her creative idea incorporating leverage. Malena noticed that St. John’s had little walk-able space for folks to get healthy outdoor exercise. But she [...]
Extreme Heat Video
Last summer we applied for funding from the CDC under the Climate-Ready Initiative to develop the Extreme Weather and Public Health materials. The program is focusing on heat related illnesses and ways to increase knowledge of healthy responses to excessive heat situations. The program worked with Kate Hoy and Dallas Teat to produce a training video targeting school children and [...]
Whooping it Up
When it comes to microbes- the whooping cough (pertussis) is a contrarian. Unlike most other pathogens- it does better in the summer than the winter. While most other infectious diseases are on the wane right now- whooping cough is whooping it up. We’ve been seeing an increase in whooping cough cases in Arizona this summer- but not enough top call [...]