The California Department of Public Health, the California Endowment, and the Public Health Institute released a document called "Health in All Policies: A Guide for State and Local Governments" this week… which provides best practices to improve the public's health and safety by incorporating health considerations into decision-making across all sectors and policy areas. The [...]
E-cigarettes have been a huge topic of discussion in the tobacco control industry and in public health over the past few years. While containing no actual tobacco, they do contain nicotine, are flavored and require the user to emulate the act of smoking. The CDC recently released a study showing that e-cigarette use has doubled [...]
Surveillance is a cornerstone of public health practice because it gives us the tools we need to identify priorities and craft effective interventions to improve outcomes. Cancer surveillance is no exception. Our Arizona Cancer Registry tracks and monitors the number and types of cancer cases in the state and publishes reports periodically. Our new report [...]
One of the most important aspects of public health is sharing effective, creative ideas with other public health agencies so more people can benefit from what we learn. Each year the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials highlights really good programs with their Vision Awards. This year, they selected 2 from Arizona to share [...]
You’ve probably heard the words “meaningful use” thrown around… but what is it? Basically, it’s using electronic health record technology to: 1) Improve quality, safety, efficiency, and reduce health disparities; 2) Engage patients and family; 3) Improve care coordination, and population and public health; and 4) Maintain privacy and security of patient health information. Using [...]
The core of our decision-making as an agency relies on evidence. Evidence can be scientific like surveillance or research or it can be administrative or financial. Whichever way you slice it- the key is to get good reliable information so that our teams can make effective decisions as we execute our mission. One of the [...]
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 [...]
You can think of the border public health advocacy network as a bi-national matrix of public health partners that collaborate to improve conditions along the US-Mexico border. The network includes national organizations like the U.S.-Mexico Border Health Commission along with state based partnerships like the Arizona-Mexico Commission and the annual Border Governor’s Conference. As part of my job [...]
It's called the 2011 Arizona Health Status and Vital Statistics Annual Report... and last year's report got hit upon 2,000,000 times. It gives our most granular public health information of the year including refined health statistics on pregnancies, births, reportable diseases, deaths, inpatient hospitalizations, emergency room visits, marriages, divorces and population for Arizona. The report provides critical data for health policy formulation, [...]
… that is the question- at least when it comes to whether to take standard measures to decolonize intensive care patients with antibiotic ointments in their nose to remove Staphylococcus bugs. Hospital associated infections are a critical public health and healthcare cost problem. While we’re losing ground in our fight against obesity- we’re making progress [...]
