It is Valley Fever Awareness Week
Valley Fever has been in the media a lot lately. Part of the reason is because last Saturday we kicked off the 8th annual Valley Fever Awareness Week in recognition of the outstanding treatment and research conducted by the Valley Fever Center for Excellence as well as the advances in Valley Fever education and public health done here at ADHS. [...]
E. coli Outbreak
We’ve just confirmed 11 cases of E. coli in AZ. Our cases appear to be part of a multi-state outbreak that’s associated with Gouda cheese sold at Costco. Maricopa (5 stores), Pima (1 store) and Yavapai counties (1 store) are involved with the investigation and the suspect cheese has been held in back stock until testing is completed. Costco is [...]
Suicide Prevention
Suicide is one of the most challenging and sensitive public health issues that we face, partly because so many folks have a hard time talking about the subject. It’s especially challenging for families that experience suicide first hand. 1,060 Arizonans died from suicide in 2009 the highest number ever, making it the 6th leading cause of death among men and [...]
Annual Statewide Environmental Health Annual Report Published
I started my career in public health working as a county Sanitarian doing inspections of restaurants, motels and the like in the mid- 1980s. My area was right around here down toward South Mountain and I inspected the cafeteria in the basement of the Executive Tower and the cafeteria that used to be on the 4th floor of the 1740 [...]
Post Election 203 Communications
If Prop 203 passes today, we’ll definitely get flooded with phone calls from people that want information on how they can get a license to become a dispensary starting Wednesday. There’s absolutely no way we could ever try to answer the inevitable questions over the phone. Number 1, we won’t have full answers until at least March of 2011 (assuming [...]
AZ’s Improving Our Birth Outcomes
Did you know that Arizona achieved an historic low Infant Mortality Rate (5.9 infant deaths for every 1,000 live births) in 2009? Infant mortality has long been a public health barometer to assess the general health of a community because good birth outcomes require a host of things to go right. There are many risk factors for poor birth outcomes. [...]