General

/General

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

It’s Primary Care Week

By | October 26th, 2011|General|

This year’s theme for Primary Care Week is “Innovations in Primary Care”, focusing on ways health systems can reinvent their practices to promote continuous, comprehensive, and coordinated health care for their patients.  Community Health Centers are models of comprehensive primary care, delivering these services in medically under-served areas to persons of all ages regardless of [...]

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Upcoming Women’s Health Conference

By | October 25th, 2011|General|

Our Women’s and Children’s Health team will be hosting a conference in Phoenix titled “Girls and Women’s Health across the Lifespan.” on Tuesday, November 8.  The conference features the Life Course Perspective.   The conference agenda is packed full of sessions that outline evidence-based tools and strategies for professional public health folks to build their inventory of [...]

New Teen Pregnancy Prevention Contracts in Place

By | October 19th, 2011|Affordable Care Act, General, Prevention|

Last week we awarded 4 community-based contracts for the new Personal Responsibility Education Program funds to prevent teen pregnancy in AZ.  The funding we’ll be passing through to our new contractors is part of the Affordable Care Act- and requires programs educate adolescents on both abstinence and contraception as ways to prevent pregnancy and STDs.  All [...]

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Arizona’s Food Safety Network

By | October 11th, 2011|General, Prevention|

The Listeria monocytogenes outbreak has captured the public’s attention these days- so I thought I’d do a piece on Arizona’s food safety network. Let’s start at the farm & ranch.  The Arizona Department of Agriculture is responsible for ensuring that the base of the food safety pyramid is solid in Arizona.  They have several divisions that are [...]

Free CME program for behavioral health providers on tobacco cessation

By | October 10th, 2011|Behavioral Health, General, Prevention|

Arizona Smokers' Helpline, the University of Arizona, Mel and Enid Zuckerman, and the College of Public Health will present a free CME conference "Evidence-based Interventions for Tobacco Cessation in Populations with Mental Illness Challenges," Saturday, Oct. 15, 2011, from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. to behavioral health providers. The conference will take place at the [...]

Cottage Industry Foods Taking Off

By | October 7th, 2011|General|

A few weeks ago, I wrote about our new Home Baked and Confectionary Goods Program. Since then, the program has really taken off.  About 700 people have registered with the program since we turned the key a few weeks ago, baking a variety of snacks, ranging from cookies and cupcakes to healthy goodies.  Bakers who [...]

Pancreatic Cancer Prevention

By | October 6th, 2011|General, Prevention|

You probably heard that Steve Jobs- the former head of Apple died this week of pancreatic cancer.  While pancreatic cancer is the 10th most common kind of cancer in the US, it’s the 4th most common cause of cancer death.  It often has a poor prognosis partly because people often don’t have any symptoms until [...]

Strategic Planning and Public Health Accreditation News

By | October 6th, 2011|General|

As a follow up to my email earlier this month introducing you to the agency-wide efforts around accreditation and presentations of the draft strategic map, I'm happy to formally announce our new mission and vision: To improve the health and wellness of people and communities in Arizona (our Mission) and Health and Wellness for all Arizonans (our [...]

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New Public Health Prevention Grant Award

By | October 4th, 2011|General|

Great news!  The CDC gave us a heads up this week that AZ will be receiving a new $842,000 Chronic Disease Prevention & Health Promotion grant.  While all states were guaranteed $300,000 on a non-competitive basis, we successfully competed for a supplemental award.  We’ll be able to be able to address the leading causes of [...]

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Run with the Herd

By | September 30th, 2011|General, Prevention|

Pretty much everybody knows that getting an annual influenza vaccine protects them from getting influenza- but fewer people realize that getting vaccinated saves other people’s lives as well.  That’s because if a large percentage of the population takes advantage of the vaccine (called herd immunity) we can reduce the overall spread of the disease- and save [...]

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