2015 Healthcare-Associated Infection Data Report Releases
Last week, the CDC released the National and State Healthcare-associated Infection Data Report for 2015 National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) data. The National Healthcare Safety Network is the nation’s most widely used Healthcare Associated Infections (HAI) tracking system and is being used for care improvement by facilities, states, regions, quality groups, and national public health agencies including CDC. The annual report uses the [...]
Data Helps Shape Public Health Priorities
ADHS collects huge amounts of data to help understand and address health problems across our state. The department uses statistics to get insights about how many people in Arizona get Valley Fever each year or where environmental hazards are. We also use statistics to address causes of disease, finding answers that impact policy and program decisions. In the 1940s and ‘50s, researchers noticed that [...]
Highlighting Progress on the Opioid Response
It has been a busy four months since the Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS) submitted the Opioid Action Plan to Governor Ducey in September. The report on findings and recommendations was one of the requirements under the public health emergency declaration issued on June 5. The challenging work of reducing opioid overdoses has continued with a focus on implementing [...]
New Year, New Targeted Lead Screening Plan
What are your health-related resolutions? The Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program’s New Year’s Resolution is to increase blood lead testing among Arizona’s most at-risk children. Children exposed to lead may not have any signs or symptoms but experience serious and permanent developmental and learning problems. The Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program released their 2018 Targeted Lead Screening Plan this week [...]
Questions about Zika…Call the Hotline
With the holiday and travel season upon us, Arizonans are encouraged to continue to rebel against arboviruses like chikungunya, dengue, and Zika. Whether you are traveling to a galaxy far, far away or to lands much closer to home, we encourage you to “Fight the Bite” and support resistance efforts. If you have a bad feeling about any of your [...]
The Importance of Communicable Disease Reporting
Infectious agents are all around us. They can be found in the food we eat, in the water we drink, in the air we breathe, and on what we touch. Modern times have brought us solutions, such as vaccines and treatments, but also problems, like air travel and globalized food distribution, which can help spread infectious diseases across state and [...]