Update on the Governor’s Budget Proposal Regarding Persons with Serious Mental Illness
On January 15, 2011, Governor Brewer released her proposed budget for next fiscal year (which begins July 1, 2011). One of the budget items would change AHCCCS (Medicaid) eligibility for adults without children (called childless adults). The ADHS currently provides behavioral health services to approximately 5,200 persons with serious mental illnesses that are childless adults. While it may appear, and [...]
Ensuring Healthy Birth Outcomes
What’s the most important thing we can do to ensure a good birth outcome? During the 1980s and 1990s, public health focused on the importance of prenatal care and ensuring that every woman got into prenatal care early in the pregnancy and continued with consistent care throughout the pregnancy. Programs like Health Start enlisted lay health workers in communities to [...]
What’s Respiratory Syncytial Virus?
Respiratory syncytial virus (or RSV) is another respiratory infection that mainly affects little kids and circulates every year. It occurs in the winter, like flu, but flu and RSV usually don’t peak at the same time. Since our flu season is early this year, it looks like our RSV season may be a little later than usual. We’ve had quite a [...]
Medical Marijuana Public Comments Available
Medical Marijuana Public Comments Posted We received more than 1,500 comments on our initial proposed rules to regulate medical marijuana. All the comments (over 1,000 pages) are posted on our http://www.azdhs.gov/prop203/ website for viewing. Our team is very busy reviewing the comments and suggestions looking for good ideas that will help build a more effective program. By the way, as we review [...]
Tucson Response
I know many of you are following the tragedy that occurred over the weekend in Tucson. If you’re like me, you’ve been trying to make sense of something that is senseless. It is not uncommon to have a variety of reactions to a sudden and violent event such as this, and you may be struggling with how to respond to [...]
Medical Marijuana Public Comments
So far, we’ve received well over 1,300 comments on the Informal Draft Rules that we posted December 17. Our first comment period ends today. We’ll be reviewing the comments and revising our initial draft over the next couple of weeks. We’ll be releasing new draft rules for public comment on Monday, January 31, kicking off our next comment period (which will [...]