In all my years in public health this is the first crack I’ve taken at being a movie critic- so give me a little slack on this one. I checked out the new movie called Contagion- and really liked it. I won’t give up too much information and spoil the film, but it’s basically a fictional [...]
Some of my most memorable moments of elementary school are about things that happened at lunchtime. Back in the day, lunchtime lasted just as long as all the other periods. It’s still that way in some places- but in others lunch hasn’t been competing for time as successfully with the other academic priorities. The School [...]
Last summer we applied for funding from the CDC under the Climate-Ready Initiative to develop the Extreme Weather and Public Health materials. The program is focusing on heat related illnesses and ways to increase knowledge of healthy responses to excessive heat situations. The program worked with Kate Hoy and Dallas Teat to produce a training [...]
Most of us are aware that the Well Woman HealthCheck increases screening for breast and cervical cancer. As part of our federal funding agreement for the program the CDC audits 100% of the services provided. Services are audited for appropriateness and timeliness- even the age of women receiving mammograms is audited for meeting guidelines. We submit [...]
The FDA approved the 2011-2012 influenza vaccine this week. The strains in this year’s vaccine were recommended by the CDC and the World Healthy Organization after studying virus samples collected from around the world to find the influenza viruses that are the most likely to cause illness during the upcoming flu season. The strains selected [...]
CDC has developed new and easy-to-use resources for preventing infections in outpatient treatment facilities. The Infection Prevention Guide and Prevention Checklist is posted on the new CDC website for outpatient care facilities.
A couple of folks from the CDC have been in Arizona this week to help us (and Sonora) to investigate an unusual number of cases (8 in Arizona and 8 in Sonora) of Guillain Barre syndrome . The Arizona cases are in the Yuma area. It’s a rare condition that rarely (but occasionally) happens several days after [...]
The major public health achievements of the first 10 years of the 21st century included improvements in vaccine preventable and infectious diseases, reductions in deaths from certain chronic diseases, declines in deaths and injuries from motor vehicle crashes, and more, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 10 domestic [...]
Arizona has been able to decrease the rate of deaths from car, truck and motorcycle crashes by 43% in the last 4 years, from about 19 deaths per 100,000 in 2005 to 11 per 100,000 Arizonans in 2009. While this is good progress, we still have a long way to go. Crashes are still the [...]
Age and risk factor appropriate screening for breast and cervical cancer is a key public health intervention that saves countless lives every year, because early detection and treatment for these cancers result in substantially better outcomes. That’s where Arizona’s Well Woman HealthCheck Program comes in… Our Well Woman HealthCheck was established in 1993 as part [...]
