We’ve been monitoring the response times for the big ambulance service provider - Rural Metro – since they went into bankruptcy in August. They have 13 different ambulance services in Arizona and we want to make sure that they're meeting the grade during their reorganization. We asked them to send us monthly reports on their response times [...]
Arizona’s public health and healthcare system teamed up with the ADHS including our Bureau of Public Health Emergency Preparedness and the Arizona Division of Emergency Management last week in one of the largest preparedness exercises of the year. The objective was to test and build preparedness capabilities across the emergency management system in AZ. More than 3,000 [...]
I was fortunate to attend the 2nd annual “El Congreso Internacional de Promoción de la Salud (CIPS)” last week in Hermosillo. There were more than 400 public health attendees from 17 countries at the conference. I presented our pre-school Empower program…. which empowers kids to make good choices about nutrition, physical activity, and tobacco using age-appropriate vehicles including costumed characters and a coloring book. [...]
The FDA made a preliminary determination that partially hydrogenated oils (the primary dietary source of trans fat in processed foods) are not "generally recognized as safe" for use in food. Their review of the research has led them to conclude that consuming trans fat raises LDL, or "bad" cholesterol, and increases the risk of coronary heart disease. The FDA opened a 60-day [...]
Our Newborn Screening Program ensures that each newborn is tested for 28 inherited disorders and hearing problems. The goal is to help kids avoid illness, developmental delays and even death by quickly identifying problems and swiftly letting their doctors know so they can implement interventions. On any given day our newborn screening team tests from [...]
You may have noticed some new faces around the ADHS the past few months as we have been hosting visiting Professors from Korea, Japan, and this coming year from Singapore. The two Professors who are currently working with us are Dr. Sungwoo Moon from Korea University and Dr. Taro Irisawa from Osaka University in Japan. They’re Emergency Physicians [...]
Our core environmental health responsibilities include administering the statewide public health sanitation program for food safety, bottled water, hotels and motels, children’s camps, public schools, and public and semi-public swimming pools. We delegate most of the actual inspection work to the county health departments. We finished our 2012 statewide Annual Report last week. Last fiscal year [...]
The ADES & Magellan of Arizona have developed a new Foster Care Toolkit to help foster families navigate the support system that’s available for foster families. It’s a one-stop guide connecting them to resources to make their job a little easier. The Toolkit includes information to help current and prospective foster parents connect with community resources [...]
One of the ways we create good public health interventions is by studying outcomes. This week, the 20th Annual Child Fatality Review report came out- which examines all 854 deaths of children under the age of 18 in 2012. The Report reviews the circumstances of each child’s death, determines preventability and makes recommendations to save children’s lives moving forward. Although the number [...]
Guest blog by Jessica Rigler, Bureau of Epidemiology and Disease Control 11th Annual Valley Fever Awareness Week Valley Fever is a lung infection caused a fungus in the soil here in Arizona. People get it by breathing in Valley Fever spores in the air. Most people will have no symptoms or recover after a few [...]
