Preparedness

/Preparedness

Items in the Preparedness category will cover everything from Emergency Medical Services to vaccination programs. This division at ADHS tracks contagious disease, coordinates emergency preparedness activity, licenses EMTs and Paramedics, regulates ambulance companies, authorizes special hospital designations like cardiac care center and Level IV trauma center, issues birth and death certificates, and tracks critical health data through various sources including hospital discharge information.

Arizona’s AIDS Drug Assistance Program’s Creative Solution

By | February 28th, 2011|Preparedness|

In the past few years, many public health programs have been changing their usual way of doing business to become more efficient while still delivering high quality products.  Our AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) is a federally-funded program that delivers life-saving medicine to low-income folks living with HIV/AIDS.  Our team created a new program called [...]

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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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Influenza’s Having a Field Week in AZ

By | February 18th, 2011|Preparedness|

The flu vaccine that you and your family got earlier will pay off over the next couple of weeks, it's going gangbusters right now.  We monitor several different indicators to determine the level of flu activity in the state and all are on the rise right now including increased school nurse and health care clinic visits for [...]

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Maricopa County Measles Case

By | February 15th, 2011|Preparedness|

Maricopa County Department of Public Health (and our Lab) confirmed a case of measles in an Arizona resident this week.  Measles is one of the most communicable diseases there is (next to chicken pox).  It’s a viral disease of the upper respiratory system that’s spread in the air via droplets.  Measles starts with a fever [...]

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Maximizing Birth Outcomes

By | February 8th, 2011|Newborn Screening, Preparedness, Prevention|

Although we know a lot about the role of proper nutrition, exercise and general health in having a healthy baby, occasionally a baby is born with a special health condition or a birth defect.  Our Newborn Screening Program tests babies for 29 special health conditions including hearing loss.  These conditions, like phenylketonuria (PKU), can be [...]

The ABC’s of our Community Health Analysis Areas

By | January 28th, 2011|General, Preparedness|

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 [...]

Teen Pregnancy on the Decline in AZ

By | January 19th, 2011|Preparedness, Prevention|

Our Bureau of Public Health Statistics just released a new 10-year trend report on Teen Pregnancy in Arizona, 1999-2009.  Some of the key findings are Teen pregnancy rates dropped 34% in AZ from 1999 to 2009. There were a total of 12,537 pregnancies to teens younger than 19 in 2009, which was the fewest number reported [...]

What’s Respiratory Syncytial Virus?

By | January 13th, 2011|Preparedness|

Respiratory syncytial virus (or RSV) is another respiratory infection that mainly affects little kids and circulates every year.  It occurs in the winter, like flu, but flu and RSV usually don’t peak at the same time.  Since our flu season is early this year, it looks like our RSV season may be a little later [...]

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Influenza Widespread in AZ

By | January 6th, 2011|Preparedness|

With last year’s pandemic, we saw how influenza can be unpredictable in terms of who it affects most, when it occurs, and what strains will circulate.  This season we are back to a more usual flu season, at least so far.  Our first laboratory-confirmed cases were detected earlier than most years (at the end of [...]

2011 Department Priorities Spotlight – Public Health Preparedness

By | January 4th, 2011|Newborn Screening, Preparedness|

Medical Marijuana will be implemented in April, 2011.  The coordination of tasks to ensure smooth and efficient implementation is a huge goal for 2011 and cuts across Bureau lines, involving many distinct portions of not only Public Health Preparedness but the Agency as a whole. Emergency Medical Services Within the Bureau of Emergency Services and [...]