Will Humble

/Will Humble

About Will Humble

Will Humble, M.P.H. Director Arizona Department of Health Services

What’s Community Paramedicine?

By | September 3rd, 2013|General|

Community paramedicine is a paradigm shift for the use of paramedics in the US.  It’s an emerging model in which paramedics function outside their usual emergency response & transport roles- delving into the world of primary care.  As the health care world increasingly shifts toward prevention and well care- the system will increasingly demand more folks [...]

CDC Sortable Stats

By | September 2nd, 2013|General|

There’s a new CDC Sortable Stats web application that went live a couple of weeks ago that provides an interactive tool to analyze behavioral risk factors and health indicators compiled from various published CDC and federal sources.  You can search by state for things like death rates (e.g.  infant mortality, heart disease, motor vehicle death rates, [...]

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Marijuana v. Cannabis

By | August 30th, 2013|General|

Are Marijuana and Cannabis the same thing when it comes to Arizona Law?  The short answer is no- and the distinction may be  an important one for Qualified Patients.  The Arizona Medical Marijuana Act provides registry identification card holders and dispensaries a number of legal protections for their medical use of Marijuana pursuant to the [...]

Project Quit Kickoff

By | August 30th, 2013|General|

Tobacco is one of the most difficult addictions to break. A successful tobacco quitter can make on average 10 attempts before they’re able to finally kick the habit. This week we launched Project Quit, a new initiative developed in partnership with the Arizona Smokers Helpline a.k.a. ASHLine to showcase the tobacco quit process.  Project Quit follows [...]

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Primary Care Provider Loan Repayment

By | August 29th, 2013|General|

Building Arizona’s inventory of primary care providers has been a priority of ours for many years- and it’s increasingly important as we move toward Medicaid restoration.   As one of our many initiatives in our Bureau of Health Systems Development, our Workforce Program hosted a presentation to Physician Assistant students at the NAU Phoenix campus last [...]

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3 Medical Conditions Move to Hearing

By | August 28th, 2013|General|

Three of the petitions to add debilitating conditions to the medical marijuana program that we received last month will be moving forward to a public hearing, which will be on Tuesday, October 29 from 9 am to noon in our State Lab conference room.  We'll also broadcast the hearing via Livestream.  The petitions are for PTSD, Migraines, [...]

Native American Trauma Report

By | August 27th, 2013|Preparedness|

One of the things you’ll see in our upcoming State Health Assessment is the fact that traumatic injury disproportionately impacts the American Indian population in Arizona.  To dive into the issue deeper and to help us design more effective interventions, our Bureau of Emergency Medical Services and Trauma System published our first Arizona American Indian [...]

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Licensing Collaborative Established as an Evidence-Based Best Practice

By | August 26th, 2013|Licensing|

Our Licensing team routinely analyzes the most frequent and important deficiencies that we observe when we conduct inspections at our licensed facilities.  We use the data to help educate the folks that we license… and to identify topics for provider training and technical assistance (public health interventions). For example, our medical facilities licensing team has found that infection control [...]

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Coming Attraction: AZ’s 1st State Health Assessment

By | August 23rd, 2013|General|

Publication of Arizona’s very first State Health Assessment is just around the corner  The 2013 Arizona State Health Assessment will use AZ quantitative and qualitative data to assess the public health status of the state.  The end product will be a comprehensive summary of the 15 leading health issues that have the greatest impact in Arizona.  [...]

New AZ Cancer Report

By | August 22nd, 2013|Prevention|

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 [...]

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