Behavioral Health Trifecta
This month we also distributed to stakeholders (and posted on our website) a new resource called “An Introduction to Arizona’s Public Behavioral Health System.” It's a high-level summary for people who wish to better understand who we are and what we do. The short document covers the service delivery structure and the continuum of care available, member enrollment and demographics, funding, [...]
Integration Forum and Materials
Our primary care and behavioral health folks put together a fabulous forum called the Arizona Integrated Models of Care in Behavioral Health and Primary Care Forum. Our team joined with the Milbank Memorial Fund to sponsor a forum on January 25 and 26 in Chandler, AZ, for policy makers in both the mental health and community health center fields. One [...]
Groundbreaking Statewide Outcome Dashboard Goes Live
One of our primary objectives over the last couple of years in behavioral health has been to shift the focus of our performance measures away from process and procedures toward actual outcomes. In other words, we don’t want to measure our success on whether someone’s paperwork is right, but on whether the services we provide actually help folks achieve their [...]
Tobacco Cessation Among Folks with a Mental Illness
For the past 18 months our tobacco cessation and behavioral health teams have been working together in a way that is positioning Arizona as a national leader in closing the gap in life expectancy for people with a mental illness! Consider these startling facts which confront Arizonans with a mental illness: Life expectancy is 30 years less than the population [...]
School Health Revolution
The Arizona Department of Health Services is partnering with the Arizona Department of Education to help schools make health a priority. Arizona has the 15th highest childhood obesity rate in the nation. By creating healthier places to learn, schools are part of the solution to the childhood obesity epidemic. One of the most effective ways to create healthy school environments [...]
Don’t Miss Your Last Chance to Comment on Arizona’s Draft Medical Marijuana Rules
Three cheers for our interdisciplinary team that’s been working hard on the latest round of Administrative Code to implement the new medical marijuana law that will take effect April 14. We changed lots of provisions since the latest draft that we released on January 31. Here are just a few highlights: The new draft rules would boost the requirements for [...]