AZ had the biggest % decrease in teen smoking rates in the country according to the new CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey this week. Smoking rates among AZ teens dropped 12% in the last couple of years- while rates generally stayed flat across the country. That's 11,000 fewer teen tobacco users between 2009 and 2011. About half of the teenagers in AZ [...]
In public health it’s good to know where the resources are – and where they're short. Our Health Systems Development team created an excellent online tool to help our partners keep track of resources -- to see where we have enough physicians and where we could use more. It also shows how much of an area is [...]
Being born too soon is the number one killer of infants in Arizona and in the nation (birth defects is a close second). 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 [...]
Bloodstream infections that start because of a “central line” in a person’s body are among the most serious of all healthcare-associated infections- causing thousands of deaths each year and about $700M in added costs. The CDC estimates that there were about 41,000 infections like these U.S. hospitals last year… and 25% percent of patients who [...]
Last legislative session, the Legislature and Governor made a statutory change that moved the AZ Biomedical Research Commission to our agency. The Commission basically awards contracts for research projects that translate into interventions to save lives. Our funding (a few million dollars per year) comes from tobacco taxes and some lottery funds. Shoana Anderson has volunteered to serve as [...]
