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“Sink or Swim” Exercise

By | June 23rd, 2010|Uncategorized|

Our preparedness team organized and executed a Functional Exercise on Tuesday last week to test Arizona’s hospital system for Interoperable Communications, Tracking of Bed Availability, Deploying Volunteer Health Professionals, Fatality Management, and Medical Evacuation/Shelter-In-Place capabilities.  The exercise focused on hospital, local health, and state health Emergency Operations Center coordination.    The exercise scenario was called Sink [...]

Into the Inferno

By | May 19th, 2010|General, Uncategorized|

It’s not just the Phoenix Suns that are hot; your backyard will be one of the hottest places on the globe for the next 4 months.  The heat on the desert floor isn’t just a nuisance, it’s expensive & lethal.  Do you know what to do to protect yourself and your family?  Do you follow [...]

Mental Health Awareness Month

By | May 13th, 2010|Uncategorized|

We’ve come a long way since the days of institutionalization and separation from community, the stigma and bias associated with mental illness, but we're not where we need to be yet.  Reducing the stigma and bias against those facing mental health challenges is a tall order, but it can be done.  Efforts to increase public [...]

3rd Annual MyFest

By | March 30th, 2010|Uncategorized|

Saturday is the third annual MyFest event out a Tempe town Lake.  This is a huge Magellan-organized youth event aimed at combating stigma associated with mental illness and is a great opportunity to get positive messages out there to youth across the state.  We expect several thousand youth to be there. It’s a youth involvement [...]

Mental Health & Tobacco

By | March 11th, 2010|Uncategorized|

Folks that face challenges with mental & behavioral health tend to smoke at a higher rate than others.  That makes this group a high priority for interventions to reduce their smoking rates.  Throughout 2010, we’ll be focusing on various intervention strategies for important health topics along these lines- and March is the final month of [...]

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Mental Health & Tobacco

By | March 11th, 2010|Uncategorized|

Folks that face challenges with mental & behavioral health tend to smoke at a higher rate than others.  That makes this group a high priority for interventions to reduce their smoking rates.  Throughout 2010, we’ll be focusing on various intervention strategies for important health topics along these lines- and March is the final month of [...]

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ADHS Going Viral

By | March 2nd, 2010|General, Uncategorized|

We’re coming up on the 3 millionth view of our hand only chest compression CPR video that we posted on the Arizona Department of Health Services channel.  Technically, right now we’re at 2.8M views now.  This is by far the most watched video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5huVSebZpM) on our YouTube channel.  Close to 1M of those views are [...]

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Salt Initiative

By | February 22nd, 2010|Prevention, Uncategorized|

We launched our salt reduction initiative this week http://www.azdhs.gov/salt/.  The overall goal is to get Arizonans to reduce their salt intake by paying more attention to the Sodium line in the nutrition facts and being a better- by selecting foods for the family that are lower in sodium. Sodium can increase your blood pressure and [...]

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Pressing Ahead

By | February 19th, 2010|General, Uncategorized|

This is what I shared with ADHS staff earlier this week - "Thanks again for all of your hard and creative work over the last year.  We’ve made a great deal of progress despite the complicated financial problems that the State has faced.  I’m not just saying that- I know it’s true and so do [...]

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MY LIFE

By | February 18th, 2010|Uncategorized|

The MY LIFE program is an award winning approach to helping youth that have experience mental health, substance abuse and/or foster care-related issues to use their experiences, talents and voice to make positive changes in their lives while helping others to do the same.  MY LIFE provides an excellent opportunity for youth to have an [...]

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