As you remember from previous posts- the Child Nutrition Act has been introduced in the Senate and moved out of Committee. This month, a bipartisan group of members in the U.S. House introduced a similar bill to reauthorize and amend the Child Nutrition Act, “Improving Nutrition for America’s Children Act.” The bill is posted at [...]
We’ve made a lot of progress toward doing something about one of the biggest killers in the state and U.S.- cardiac arrest. We’ve published peer-reviewed journal articles that demonstrate the superiority of the new hands-only CPR technique, implemented the new approach throughout the EMS community, made inroads with getting the public aware of the new [...]
You probably remember how we shifted from general funds to fee-based inspection programs. The most controversial fee increase was for child care facilities, as the costs of inspecting child care facilities had been almost entirely subsidized by the state’s general fund. In the end, we found a way to use alternative funding sources to provide [...]
In an effort to spread the good word about our innovative Empower Pack program, we submitted an article for presentation at the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting this fall. We heard last week that our submission entitled "EMPOWER – Arizona's collaborative leadership efforts in implementing policy on childhood obesity and tobacco use in child [...]
This week, I'm sharing the CDC's 5 Winnable Battles as set forth by the new head of the CDC), Dr. Frieden. During the next 3 years, CDC will be increasingly focusing its strategic planning on public health and policy interventions to help win the 5 “Winnable Battles”. There’s not much on the CDC’s website yet [...]
The President signed a Memorandum in February establishing the Task Force on Childhood Obesity and charged them with developing an interagency action plan to solve the problem of obesity in the US. The Task Force included the Secretaries of the Health, Agriculture, Interior, Education, Office of Management and Budget, Assistant to the President and Chief of [...]
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 [...]
The USDA’s Child Nutrition Act is up for re-authorization this year. The program provides food to more than 31M school children through the National School Lunch Program as well as 11M that qualify for the School Breakfast Program. Many children get ½ of their daily calories at schools- making this program a great leverage point [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
