Throughout my career I’ve learned that a cornerstone of working with the community is to make sure you have a true partnership. Every partnership starts with trust. In order to establish and maintain trust throughout our implementation period, the ADHS needs to ensure that our process is completely fair, open, honest and transparent. Part of [...]
The AZ Medical Marijuana Act states that cities and towns may adopt "reasonable regulations" regarding the location and operations of medical marijuana dispensaries and growing operations in their jurisdictions. The ADHS still has the responsibility to issue the dispensary license- but any license that we ultimately issue would be contingent on the prospective facility being [...]
Our Raise Your Voice Behavioral Health Forums are going quite well. You’ll remember that our objective for the Forums is to help us transform our behavioral health system for the better. Our behavioral health team has been traveling to most parts of the state to hold focus groups including 14 in Maricopa County and focus [...]
A couple of weeks ago I planned to open the docket to overhaul the Administrative Code (Rules) that we use to evaluate and monitor health and safety in licensed behavioral health facilities in AZ. That plan was based on the assumption that the Medical Marijuana Act was going down to defeat because at that time [...]
By now you probably know that Proposition 203, the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act, appears to have passed after all (although the final determination will actually be made when the election is certified on November 29). The Act identifies ADHS as the organization that’s responsible for carrying out the provisions of the law. There will be several [...]
Arizona citizens with a serious mental illness have a life expectancy that’s 30 years less than the general population. These folks don’t die early because of their mental illness; rather, they die from preventable physical health conditions like obesity, smoking, lung disease, stroke and heart disease. That’s why the Department is partnering with the Milbank [...]
Last year at this time the new H1N1 flu virus was going gangbusters. Loads of Arizonans were getting sick (especially kids), the vaccine was still in short supply. The county health departments were prioritizing which doctors could get the vaccine. What a difference a year makes. Flu activity across the country is light (so far), [...]
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 [...]
As predicted by our 1990 ADHS Vital Statistics Bureau in 1990- cancer is now the number one killer in Arizona – surpassing heart disease. Does this mean that cancer is getting worse? Probably not- it really says that because of better management, treatment, and prevention of heart disease- people with heart conditions are living longer. [...]
The Licensing Division, Office of Medical Facilities recently presented extensive technical assistance during the Arizona Ambulatory Surgery Center Association Fall Conference this month. Staff from the Licensing Division including Tucson and Phoenix Surveyors as well as Life Safety Code Surveyors and State Architects provided information to about 180 participants. Topics included the state of current [...]
