School Nutrition Overhaul
The USDA’s Child Nutrition Act is up for re-authorization this year. The program provides food to more than 31M school children through the National School Lunch Program as well as 11M that qualify for the School Breakfast Program. Many children get ½ of their daily calories at schools- making this program a great leverage point to improve nutrition for kids [...]
Arizona Serves
The Governor established a 20-member ArizonaSERVES Task Force www.arizonaserves.gov by Executive Order on Tuesday to help connect faith-based and non-profit organizations with opportunities to assist folks in Arizona who’ve been impacted by economic hardship. The goal of the Task Force is to better coordinate volunteer efforts statewide, and find new strategies to promote outreach and maximize existing resources to serve [...]
Infections
Post-surgery infections cost a fortune. Health care–associated infections cause 1.7 million extended hospitalizations each year. A study published last week in the Archives of Internal Medicine looked at the clinical and economic costs from these infections which are poorly understood. The researchers looked at national hospital discharge records to find sepsis (blood borne infections) and pneumonia cases- specifically excluding community-acquired [...]
ADHS Going Viral
We’re coming up on the 3 millionth view of our hand only chest compression CPR video that we posted on the Arizona Department of Health Services channel. Technically, right now we’re at 2.8M views now. This is by far the most watched video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5huVSebZpM) on our YouTube channel. Close to 1M of those views are attributed to viral sharing.
Do You Know Your Blood Pressure?
High blood pressure is at the source of roughly one in six deaths among adults annually. About one in three adult Arizonans have blood pressure that’s too high, putting huge economic demands on Medicaid, Medicare (AHCCCS) and our private health insurers (plus, of course, the loss of life). The Institute of Medicine put out a report last week that identifies [...]
New Earache & Pneumonia Shot
This week, the FDA approved and the CDC has recommended the use of a new vaccine called Prevnar 13™ for healthy kids children age 2-59 months. The new shot prevents invasive pneumococcal disease from 13 different kinds of pneumonia germs. It also prevents many germs that cause middle ear infections and some kinds of meningitis. It's also exciting that it [...]