Many of the comments that we received at the public hearings were about how we'll evaluate and award the dispensary licenses. Many of the questions were about zoning, so here's a brief summary of how the zoning part will work: The final rules outline a 2-step process whereby applicants enter into a competitive screening in each Community Health Analysis Area [...]
We’ve published our final Rules for managing the upcoming Medical Marijuana Program in Arizona. We released the final rules and a series of fact sheets on our website first-thing this morning. The fact sheets are designed to help prospective qualified patients, designated caregivers, dispensary applicants and physicians understand the final set of rules (including dispensary application [...]
As I mentioned in my blog last Friday computer models developed by the international community and the federal government suggested that very low levels of radiation were crossing the Pacific Ocean late last week and that there could be very small increases in natural radiation in North America including Arizona this week. All the models [...]
The National Alliance on Mental Illness released a report this month that included policy recommendations for states to consider including educating the public, families and peers about mental illness and incorporating behavioral health screening into primary care. The good news is that we’re on the mark here in Arizona as we’ve already begun to implement [...]
Our Bureau of Nutrition and Physical Activity just completed a series of free cooking-based nutrition trainings for childcare providers in Arizona. The Cooking Matters curriculum from Share our Strength, as part of the Wal-Mart Foundation Health Initiatives, gives childcare providers the opportunity to learn how to prepare healthy meals and snacks on a limited budget and [...]
Trauma remains a big problem in Arizona; it’s the leading cause of death for folks under 44 and nearly 27,000 people suffered injuries severe enough to be cared for in trauma centers in 2009. We’ve been working hard over the last few years to recruit new rural hospitals into the trauma system as Level IV [...]
Public health efforts eradicated smallpox from the globe in the late 1970s. The last naturally occurring case was in Somalia in 1977 (followed by a couple of lab accident cases in 1978). Public health set its sites on Polio next- with an expectation that it could be eradicated before the turn of the century. A [...]
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 [...]
We’ve made a strong effort in the past couple years to make sure that we are doing our best to protect the health and safety of people in our licensed facilities. Whenever possible, we work to help those facilities come into compliance with our rules, but sometimes we have no choice but to drop the [...]
For the past 18 months our tobacco cessation and behavioral health teams have been working together in a way that is positioning Arizona as a national leader in closing the gap in life expectancy for people with a mental illness! Consider these startling facts which confront Arizonans with a mental illness: Life expectancy is 30 [...]
