Being born too soon is the number one killer of infants in Arizona and in the nation. Death rates from prematurity are declining but babies born too soon (before 37 weeks) often face medical, developmental and social challenges as they get older. More than 8,000 babies in Arizona were born too soon last year. This week the March [...]
I’ve written several pieces over the last few weeks highlighting our efforts to better integrate primary healthcare into the treatment plans for folks with mental illnesses- but the issue of providing better coordinated care for folks with multiple chronic medical conditions is really far bigger than this integration issue. More than 25% of Americans have multiple [...]
For years, you’ve heard that you should take your health care into your own hands. It may soon be easier because HHS wants you to be able to access your electronic health care records. One key argument to give people access is if they know what is there, they’ll ask better questions or even make notes [...]
Life expectancy improved by more than 30 years in the US during the 20th Century. Advances in diagnosis and treatment of disease have played a role, but the real reason we’re living longer today has a lot more to do with public health interventions than advances in health care. Interventions like vaccines, motor vehicle safety, [...]
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 [...]
More than 10% of Arizonans have diabetes. But what’s even more alarming are the recent estimate by the CDC that about 1.5 million Arizonans (25%) have pre-diabetes, a condition in which blood sugar levels are higher than normal, but not high enough to be considered diabetes. Pre-diabetes significantly raises a person’s risk of Type 2 [...]
What’s the most important thing we can do to ensure a good birth outcome? During the 1980s and 1990s, public health focused on the importance of prenatal care and ensuring that every woman got into prenatal care early in the pregnancy and continued with consistent care throughout the pregnancy. Programs like Health Start enlisted lay [...]
Our Behavioral Health Division picked up a cool $2M (federal) grant from the AZ Department of Housing last month. This $2M plus the $2M we received several months ago, now equals $4M that we’ll be able to use in our bridge subsidy voucher program. Just like in sales, the cornerstone for making public health progress [...]
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 [...]
The US obesity epidemic is costing Americans more and more each year. It’s not just the decreased quality of life that it causes, but it causes a whole host of downstream problems like diabetes and circulatory problems. Type 2 diabetes had been a disease of folks over 40 that became seriously overweight over time- but [...]
