We had the second of four public hearings on the draft rules in Tempe on Tuesday afternoon. We got a lot of good input from folks and there were some good suggestions to improve the draft rule. The most valuable comments came from people that offered concrete ideas for ways we can improve the rule's [...]
Last week I wrote about our Behavioral Health Outcomes Dashboard <https://blog.devazdhs.gov/?p=1117> - which highlights our efforts to shift our performance measures toward actual outcomes. In other words, we want to measure whether the services we provide actually help folks achieve their goals rather than whether someone’s paperwork is right. The same is true for public [...]
We’ll be holding four public comment meetings for the Medical Marijuana Rules next week. Public comment meetings are the part of the Rulemaking process whereby “an agency shall afford persons the opportunity to submit in writing statements, arguments, data and views on the proposed rule, with or without the opportunity to present them orally”. We [...]
A number of published studies have found that using marijuana (and other psychoactive substances) is associated with an earlier onset of psychotic illness (notice I said “is associated with” rather than “causes”). National mental health surveys have repeatedly found more substance use, especially cannabis use, among people with a diagnosis of a psychotic disorder. A [...]
Three cheers for our interdisciplinary team that’s been working hard on the latest round of Administrative Code to implement the new medical marijuana law that will take effect April 14. We changed lots of provisions since the latest draft that we released on January 31. Here are just a few highlights: The new draft rules [...]
Twenty-two employees from ADHS and members of their families teamed up last week and joined the national effort to rid the nation and our state of homelessness. The beginning step is to produce clear evidence of the need by providing the government of (as closely as we can) the actual number of people who are [...]
The Arizona Developmental Disabilities Planning Council is funded by the fed's and is established by an Arizona Executive Order. They're located on the second floor of our 1740 building. The Council's goal is to help folks with developmental disabilities and their families by supporting approaches that enable persons with DD to fully participate and contribute to their communities through full integration [...]
Several years ago, our public health statistics team divided the State into 126 Community Health Analysis Areas to help us analyze data for various disease monitoring programs. The initial trigger to develop the CHAAs was a 1988 law that directed the ADHS to use the data in the cancer registry to identify areas and populations that need [...]
On January 15, 2011, the Governor released her proposed budget for next fiscal year, which begins July 1, 2011. Our part of the budget in the link above is on pages 105 through 111. You kinda need to be a budgeteer to understand some of it, so I’ll try to distill it down a little [...]
On January 15, 2011, the Governor released her proposed budget for next fiscal year, which begins July 1, 2011. Our part of the budget in the link above is on pages 105 through 111. You kinda need to be a budgeteer to understand some of it, so I’ll try to distill it down a little [...]
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