2011 Department Priorities Spotlight- Public Health Prevention
The name of the game for Public Health Prevention in 2011 is integration and leverage. Our Public Health Prevention Team will be focusing on the social determinants of health and working to implement policies, systems and environmental changes that make the healthy choices easy. Here are some examples of our public health prevention priorities for the coming year: Worksite Wellness Perhaps [...]
What’s a Certificate of Necessity, Anyway?
Arizona uses a Certificate of Necessity (CON) system to regulate ground ambulance service in Arizona- and to make sure that every place in the State has adequate emergency medical services, including the frontier parts of AZ. The CON actually describes the geographic service area, level of service (advanced life support or basic life support), hours of operation, response times, effective date, expiration date and [...]
Body Mass Index – the Future Leading Health Indicator?
Every year that goes by brings more solid information suggesting that the body mass index (BMI) may become the future leading health indicator. If you’re wondering what BMI is; it’s your weight in kilograms (Kg) divided by the square of your height in meters (m2). There’s solid evidence that BMIs in the upper 20s and higher are associated with a [...]
Gulf Fish Testing?
In a post last Summer, I mentioned that our state public health laboratory Environmental & Analytical Chemistry unit has been selected as 1 of 8 chemistry laboratories across the country that would be examining commercial seafood for contaminants from the gusher in the Gulf. The goal was to find out whether commercial seafood has been contaminated by the oil spill [...]
2011 Department Priorities Spotlight – Arizona State Hospital
We’ve got an exiting year in store for the Arizona State Hospital in 2011. One of the highlights will be our New Forensic Hospital which will open in the Fall. During 2010 our Forensic team reorganized their treatment groups to focus on both psychiatric symptom stability and pro-social skill development and engagement. During 2011 we’ll further apply these principles and [...]
AZ Public Health Laboratory Capacity
A few years ago it became pretty clear that we were facing some budget reductions. At the time, we had no idea that our budget reductions would be as extensive as they turned out to be. However, we did know that if we were going to maintain our laboratory capacity to protect the folks of AZ, we’d have to diversify [...]