Our Physical Activity and Nutrition and Child Care Licensing programs were selected for a national award from Let’s Move!- Child Care for our outstanding work to promote young children’s health and prevent childhood obesity through the Empower program and our training videos. Our work will be showcased at the May 9 Let’s Move! Child Care [...]
Much of what we do in public health depends on the system seeking out “leverage” meaning designing interventions that have high impact with minimal cost. Malena Bazurto and the Apache County Health District recently won a national award for her creative idea incorporating leverage. Malena noticed that St. John’s had little walk-able space for folks to get [...]
This month AHCCCS told us that they’ve picked our Bureau of Tobacco & Chronic Disease as the state applicant for HHS’ Medicaid Incentives for Prevention of Chronic Diseases Grant. The grant proposal (which will be developed with AHCCCS) must be turned in to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services early next month. The grant [...]
Our Bureau of Nutrition and Physical Activity just completed a series of free cooking-based nutrition trainings for childcare providers in Arizona. The Cooking Matters curriculum from Share our Strength, as part of the Wal-Mart Foundation Health Initiatives, gives childcare providers the opportunity to learn how to prepare healthy meals and snacks on a limited budget and [...]
The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 became law this month. This reauthorization of the federal school nutrition program includes a number of elements that will help move the needle on childhood obesity. The Act recognizes the importance of school meals to the health and academic success of kids and gives school nutrition programs new [...]
Previous studies have found a link between not getting enough sleep and an increased risk of obesity in adults and new research this month suggests that sleep deprivation could be a powerful factor for obesity in kids as well. A new study in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine found that toddlers that got [...]
Just a reminder that you can sign up for electronic notifications in your in-box of our media releases, and lots of other cool communications like our weekly, in-season, healthy recipe at: http://visitor.constantcontact.com/email.jsp?m=1101362445484. Tell your friends too.
The Trust for America’s Health released their annual obesity report. Overall, the national trend toward increasing obesity rates continued it’s march forward. Arizona ranked in the middle of the pack, but the pack itself in increasingly unhealthy. More than two-thirds of states have adult obesity rates above 25 percent. In 1991, no state had an [...]
Congratulations to our Bureau of Nutrition and Physical Activity for their grant award announced this month from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials Leadership for Healthy Communities program. Over the coming year, we’ll be strengthening our capacity to make a dent in childhood obesity by conducting a health impact assessment to prevent childhood [...]
In an effort to spread the good word about our innovative Empower Pack program, we submitted an article for presentation at the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting this fall. We heard last week that our submission entitled "EMPOWER – Arizona's collaborative leadership efforts in implementing policy on childhood obesity and tobacco use in child [...]
