People who use opioids, their loved ones, and the health care professionals treating them need multiple layers of support as we continue the fight against the ongoing opioid overdose epidemic. The Opioid Assistance and Referral Line, or OAR Line, is here to help everyone impacted by opioids. Medical experts offer patients, providers, and family members [...]
How many lives could be saved if more people carried naloxone and were trained to recognize the signs of overdose? Many of us know and care about at least one person who has struggled with substance use disorder. Overdose statistics indicate that five people a day (more than 1,800 people each year) are dying from [...]
The state of Arizona, along with the rest of the nation, is confronting a troubling surge in opioid-related overdose deaths, with illicit fentanyl and other synthetic opioids playing a pivotal role. The Arizona Department of Health Services recently published the Opioid Overdoses Surveillance Report, Arizona, 2022. The latest available data unveils a complex scenario demanding [...]
We recently launched an interactive dashboard that is providing timely data about the opioid epidemic in Arizona. The dashboard is a tool that ADHS and our partners are using to develop interventions that will keep our communities safe. The data is a valuable resource to help identify trends. For example, the data from a new [...]
Today we released a new report highlighting recent activities in the fight to reduce opioid overdoses and deaths in our state, and a look at opioid surveillance data in the past year. The report highlights some areas of great progress: ADHS established final rules for pain management clinics and began taking applications in January 2019 [...]
The 2017 Arizona Opioid Emergency Response Report is out today, and while significant progress has been made, there is still work to do towards reducing opioid deaths in Arizona. This report highlights the emergency response actions taken over the past year since Governor Ducey issued his public health emergency declaration in response to the data [...]
Governor Doug Ducey has officially ended the formal emergency public health declaration he issued last year that directed our department to lead a statewide response to the opioid epidemic. We have made tremendous strides, but the work we started last June is far from complete. The list of accomplishments over this last year is long [...]
Many of the provisions of the Arizona Opioid Epidemic Act, or Senate Bill 1001, go into effect on April 26. Governor Ducey signed the law on January 26, just four days after a special session was held with unanimous support for passage of the landmark legislation to reduce overdoses and improve patient safety. Some of the [...]
This week we celebrated National Public Health Week, highlighting the great work and accomplishments of the Arizona Department of Health Services and our public health and healthcare partners from across the state. We are concluding this week with the release of our Annual Report to highlight many of the great projects and programs our teams accomplished over the last fiscal year, [...]
It has been a busy four months since the Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS) submitted the Opioid Action Plan to Governor Ducey in September. The report on findings and recommendations was one of the requirements under the public health emergency declaration issued on June 5. The challenging work of reducing opioid overdoses has continued [...]
