Dealing with disease can be difficult on the body, mind, and finances. In 2023, there have been 13,087 cases of reportable infectious disease so far in the state. For Arizonans combating disease, the Arizona Department of Health Services’ Office of Rapid Response Disease Investigation (ORRDI) is here to help, connecting them with assistance so they [...]
We recently launched an interactive dashboard and a number of resources to support the hepatitis A outbreak response efforts of county and tribal health departments, health care providers, and correctional facilities in Arizona. Tracking when and where the outbreak is occurring and who it is affecting is critical to the response. There have been more [...]
Ever wonder about the likely transmission pathway of Zika Virus, or maybe about the symptoms of Brucellosis? Now you can easily look up this information and more in our new mobile app, the AZ Infectious Disease Resource (IDAZ). The official launch of the app coincides with our annual Arizona Infectious Disease Exercise and Training (July [...]
We collect all kinds of surveillance about prevalence of disease, birth, causes of death, reasons for hospital visits, smoking rates and hundreds of other indicators to help us assess health indicators and design interventions to improve outcomes. For the first time ever in 2014, we developed a tool to explore this data and visualize it [...]
We’ve known for a long time that your family health history can have a profound impact on your risks for certain inheritable diseases and illnesses. Until now, there hasn’t been an easy way to track your family health history. The Surgeon General's Office has developed an internet-based tool called “My Family Health Portrait” which makes [...]
You may remember that at the end of May, Maricopa County Department of Public Health warned us about avoiding swimmer’s itch by not wading along the shorelines of some of our lakes. Swimmer’s itch or cercarial dermatitis, is a rash caused by a tiny parasitic flatworm of birds that can occur in lakes and ponds throughout [...]
We’re smack dab in the middle of monsoon now, which means it’s time to think about Valley Fever. It’s a lung infection caused by a fungus that lives in the soil in the desert (below 4,000 feet). People get it by breathing in dust that contains fungal spores. Valley Fever causes cough, fever, headache, feeling [...]
The American Medical Association voted to recognize obesity as a disease this week. This is an important change… because the term “disease” in the managed care world means that that prevention and treatment is more medically necessary, justifying reimbursement for necessary interventions. If obesity isn't a disease then I don't know what is. Obesity has [...]
Fifteen years ago The Lancet published a case study that erroneously suggested that there could be a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. That letter has long since been discredited, and back in 2010 The Lancet retracted the article. Anti-vaccine advocates have been pointing to that long-since discredited 1998 case study to argue that there [...]
Check out CDC’s new iPad App, Solve the Outbreak, which lets you pretend you’re a disease outbreak investigator in the world-class Epidemic Intelligence Service by solving outbreaks based on real-life. When new outbreaks happen, disease detectives are sent in to figure out how they started, before they can spread. You get to investigate the outbreak and [...]
