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

AZ Bills Related to Marijuana

By | March 16th, 2011|General|

Controlled Substances A few years ago, an Arizona law was passed that established a Controlled Substances Prescription Monitoring Program which requires pharmacies and medical practitioners who dispense Schedule II, III, and IV controlled substances to a patient, to report prescription information to the Board of Pharmacy on a weekly basis.  The purpose of this legislation [...]

Cross-cutting Marijuana Team Hitting on All Cylinders

By | March 14th, 2011|General|

Under the provisions of the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act we had 120 days to get the entire program up and running.  A short timeframe for this complex program (to say the least).  That gives us until close of business on April 13, 2011 to have everything ready.  That means we’ll need to finish the Rulemaking [...]

Pre-March 28 Medical Marijuana Certifications

By | March 9th, 2011|General|

  As I was looking through a weekly publication in the Phoenix area I noticed that there are several physicians that are already advertising their services for medical marijuana evaluations and certifications for a fee.  Some of the ads and websites seem to imply that the certifications that physicians are writing right now will be [...]

What’s Procure AZ?

By | March 3rd, 2011|General|

We began working over 2 years ago with the State Procurement Office to initiate a statewide e-procurement system called Procure AZ.  The goal of the statewide system is transparency of all procurement actions, cost reductions, and a more efficient use of time and resources by reducing purchasing timelines.  We started using the new system on [...]

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CDC Launches Funding Assistance Site

By | February 28th, 2011|General, Preparedness, Prevention|

The CDC launched their new CDC Funding Assistance Data and Profiles site this week.  The website provides quick access to information on CDC’s funding in states and territories like grants and cooperative agreements to state and local health departments, universities, and other public and private agencies for a variety of public health programs.

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Resources for Getting up to Speed on Marijuana as Medication

By | February 25th, 2011|General|

As we get closer to implementing the AZ Medical Marijuana Act in mid-April, I thought it might be a good idea to post some information that may be helpful to physicians and prospective qualifying patients.  Over the last weeks, I’ve been sent a number of articles and sources of information about the medical use of [...]

Medical Marijuana Public Comments Posted

By | February 25th, 2011|General|

We received more than 1,500 comments on our second draft of the medical marijuana rules- bring the total number of comments to more than 3,000.  We’ve posted all the comments on our hub website http://www.azdhs.gov/prop203/ (with personal information and foul language removed).  We’ll be examining the suggestions over the coming weeks and expect to publish [...]

ADHS’ Community Garden

By | February 25th, 2011|General, Prevention|

It’s always best to lead by example.  We’ve been encouraging community gardens for years and now we have one!  After much hoping, dreaming and planning the community garden is finally a reality.  In October, Jonathan Manning from Elgin Nursery came out to help us break ground.  We added compost and cottonseed meal to a long [...]

Food Cottage Industry Bill

By | February 24th, 2011|General|

I had the opportunity to talk about the benefits of HB 2103 last week. It’s a real simple bill with the potential to have a big impact.  It would basically allow folks to prepare (not potentially hazardous) food in their own home for commercial purposes as long as they package and label it with the [...]

AHCCCS Coverage Changes?

By | February 24th, 2011|Behavioral Health, General|

A few weeks ago I wrote about the portion of the proposed FY 2012 budget that would suspend for 2 years AHCCCS (Medicaid) eligibility for adults without children (called childless adults).  As I mentioned in the earlier post, that kind of change would need to be approved by then federal government.  Last week, the Secretary [...]

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