We had our agency Sunset Hearing last Wednesday in the Senate. Every 10 years our agency comes up for a redetermination to see if the mission of the department is still necessary etc. If so, then ADHS is “reauthorized”- hopefully for another 10 years. The bill (HB 2029) passed out of the House several weeks [...]
Pima County will receive a $16 million grant as part of the national Communities Putting Prevention to Work efforts funded through the federal Stimulus program. They’ll be creating a community-wide set of strategies and interventions to reduce obesity by ensuring safe, attractive accessible places for physical activity and making healthy foods available, accessible, and affordable. [...]
I met with the staff of most of the members of Arizona’s congressional delegation Wednesday in Washington DC at an event called Hill Day sponsored by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation. I used the opportunity to talk to them about nutritional policy issues like boosting the nutritional strength of the foods that are served under the free and reduced lunch [...]
The latest issue of Health Affairs http://www.healthaffairs.org/ has some important resources and research related to the increasing problem of childhood obesity. Kids are eating more snacks -- salty chips, sweetened sodas, candy bars -- than ever before. Trend data show that children are averaging nearly three snacks per day, with 27% of their daily calories [...]
Post-surgery infections cost a fortune. Health care–associated infections cause 1.7 million extended hospitalizations each year. A study published last week in the Archives of Internal Medicine looked at the clinical and economic costs from these infections which are poorly understood. The researchers looked at national hospital discharge records to find sepsis (blood borne infections) and [...]
High blood pressure is at the source of roughly one in six deaths among adults annually. About one in three adult Arizonans have blood pressure that’s too high, putting huge economic demands on Medicaid, Medicare (AHCCCS) and our private health insurers (plus, of course, the loss of life). The Institute of Medicine put out a [...]
Please take a couple of minutes to sign up for our new ADHS electronic updates feature. When you sign up to receive electronic updates from the Department, you can click on the kinds of things that you want to receive, like our new “healthy and in-season recipe of the week”, media releases, immunizations newsletters and [...]
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 [...]
Throughout history, mankind’s future was largely determined by fate. Infectious diseases like Diphtheria and Smallpox could wipe out an entire family in just a few days. People were vulnerable to outside threats ranging from a lack of clean drinking water to poor sanitation to gaps in environmental infrastructure that led to a host of infectious [...]
Perhaps nothing in public is more controversial than the question of what is the best way to delay sexual activity in youth. Some say abstinence education is the best way. Some say it’s a more broad approach and boosting self esteem. Some say it’s keeping kids involved in sports and other activities. Some people say [...]
