Starting this month, ADHS will be launching a project to screen water in many licensed child care facilities for lead. Our Child Care Licensing surveyors will collect water from a sample of drinking water sources at facilities while they’re out to conduct facility inspections. The surveyors will bring the water samples to our Arizona State [...]
Currently, the United States and Canada are experiencing an outbreak of Cyclospora, a foodborne parasite. People who swallow this parasite become sick with ongoing diarrhea, often going away and coming back (relapsing), loss of appetite, gas, stomach pain, and fatigue. Symptoms usually start a week after the parasite is swallowed, but can be as short [...]
One in three children in the United States are overweight or obese. Childhood obesity puts kids at risk for health problems that were once seen only in adults, like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease. The good news is that childhood obesity can be prevented. In recognition of National Childhood Obesity Awareness [...]
Binational surveillance allows public health on both sides of the border to investigate potential exposures and cases of infectious diseases. Our relationship with our border state of Sonora, Mexico has been long standing and we have had shared a surveillance system since 2007. In early August, representatives from the Office of Border Health and the Bureau [...]
September brings not only the hope for cooler weather but a chance to eat more fruits and vegetables as we celebrate Fruits and Veggies-More Matters Month. The latest Dietary Guidelines and the nutrition recommendations from ChooseMyPlate are specific in how many fruits and vegetables each of us should eat each day, but most of us [...]
The HIV Prevention Program just completed a pilot project that provided free home HIV test kits by mail or in-person pickup. People who had never had an HIV test, or who had not tested in a year or longer, qualified to receive a kit. A simple, 20-minute home test, OraQuick, was chosen as it uses an [...]
Every year, one in six (47.8 million) people in the United States get sick from the food they eat. Oftentimes, foodborne illnesses are seen as being caused by carelessness or negligence, but even the best of intentions can’t stop a foodborne illness unless the right preventive actions are taken. The Food Safety and Environmental Services [...]
Recent events such as Hurricane Harvey have illustrated the importance of information sharing during a disaster response. Communication and coordination between first responders, health care facilities, emergency management, public health, and other responders is critical to protecting the health and well-being of disaster victims. After action reports and lessons learned from previous responses almost always [...]
Our HIV Surveillance Program has just released their 2017 Annual Report which includes data up through 2016. The number of people living with HIV in Arizona was 17,464 in 2016. This trend that has been slowly increasing over the last two decades partially due to enhanced treatments that lead to improved survival rates for people [...]
The Arizona State Loan Repayment Program provides loan repayment incentives to eligible health care providers who commit to serve in Arizona’s medically underserved communities. Up to $65,000 of loan repayment assistance is available for physicians and dentists in exchange for an initial two-year commitment to serve in federally designated Health Professional Shortage Areas in Arizona. [...]
