General

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Here you will find topics ranging from current events that affect public health in Arizona to overall information about the Arizona Department of Health Services

Forging a New Trauma Tool

By | December 7th, 2011|General, Prevention|

Kudos to our EMS and Trauma System team for forging some new tools to improve trauma care in AZ.  Our Data and Quality Assurance team  developed an innovative benchmarking tool that’s shared with each of AZ’s trauma centers.  The tool shows each facility their injury specific survival rates and compares those rates to the (blinded) other [...]

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Home Birth Protest

By | December 6th, 2011|General, Licensing|

Those of you that were working at our downtown campus last Wednesday afternoon may have seen the 100 or so folks carrying placards in front of our 150 Building.  They were asking us to make it easier to have a home-birth in AZ.  How can we do that, you ask?  Many of you probably didn’t [...]

A Virus is Born

By | December 5th, 2011|General, Preparedness|

The CDC confirmed the birth of a new influenza virus in this week’s MMWR Weekly Report.  The newborn is named “Swine-origin Triple Reassortant Influenza A (H3N2) (S-OtrH3N2)”.  The hybrid virus was found in a handful of school-age kids in Iowa recently- and luckily the kids recovered and none were hospitalized.  Nobody outside the initial cluster has been infected [...]

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HIV Becomes a Chronic Disease

By | December 1st, 2011|General|

Chronic disease often calls up bad images for people because it means living with the disease for a long time.  But…  there was a time when cancer wasn’t chronic disease because people got sick and died pretty quickly.  The same goes for HIV.  When it was first discovered in the early 80s people quickly transitioned [...]

Integration Licensing Forums

By | November 30th, 2011|General|

Earlier this year the Governor signed HB 2634 which directs us to develop new rules for licensing places that can provide both behavioral and physical health services. We’re excited about this rulemaking because it supports our efforts to establish coordination and collaboration between all behavioral health and physical health providers. We’ve developed a preliminary plan [...]

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The Health Care/Public Health Continuum

By | November 29th, 2011|General, Prevention|

In the world of health care- the clinician works with patients individually.  They examine various indicators of health for their patient including direct observations and laboratory or other diagnostic tests and implement interventions to help their patient improve their health.  Providers also encourage their patients to live healthy lifestyles and take safety precautions- and help [...]

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RSV Ramping Up in AZ

By | November 28th, 2011|General|

Respiratory syncytial virus (or RSV) is a respiratory virus that mainly affects little kids- and circulates around this time of year. There’s no vaccine- but clinicians can give a preventive antibody treatment to folks at greatest risk (e.g. premature infants).   It spreads mostly in the winter (like influenza) but flu and RSV don’t usually peak at [...]

Annual US Mexico Border Health Commission Meeting

By | November 25th, 2011|General|

I was fortunate to be able to attend the US-México Border Health Commission Annual Meeting in Ensenada this month.  Mary Wakefield(Administrator for HRSA) and Víctor Hugo López Aranda (General Director of the National Commission of  Social Health Protection) attended some of the meetings (and social events) and co-chaired the Plenary Session.  Victor was representing the new Secretary of [...]

Kick the Habit

By | November 23rd, 2011|General|

This month the Arizona Smokers’ Helpline expanded its arsenal of resources to help smokers quit tobacco with the addition of the Call it Quits app which debuted on ASHLine's Facebook page this week and will soon be introduced as an iPhone app. The Call It Quits app on Facebook and iPhone are another free tool brought to you by the ASHLine to help smokers win their battle against tobacco. The [...]