For years, you’ve heard that you should take your health care into your own hands. It may soon be easier because HHS wants you to be able to access your electronic health care records. One key argument to give people access is if they know what is there, they’ll ask better questions or even make notes [...]
Life expectancy improved by more than 30 years in the US during the 20th Century. Advances in diagnosis and treatment of disease have played a role, but the real reason we’re living longer today has a lot more to do with public health interventions than advances in health care. Interventions like vaccines, motor vehicle safety, [...]
This month AHCCCS told us that they’ve picked our Bureau of Tobacco & Chronic Disease as the state applicant for HHS’ Medicaid Incentives for Prevention of Chronic Diseases Grant. The grant proposal (which will be developed with AHCCCS) must be turned in to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services early next month. The grant [...]
The Arizona Nutrition Network just launched a new campaign targeting Whole Grains. The goal is to educate Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program participants on the importance and benefits of eating plenty of whole grains. Whole grains are great because they give you fiber, B vitamins including folate and they are low in fat, reducing your risk [...]
More than 10% of Arizonans have diabetes. But what’s even more alarming are the recent estimate by the CDC that about 1.5 million Arizonans (25%) have pre-diabetes, a condition in which blood sugar levels are higher than normal, but not high enough to be considered diabetes. Pre-diabetes significantly raises a person’s risk of Type 2 [...]
The name of the game for Public Health Prevention in 2011 is integration and leverage. Our Public Health Prevention Team will be focusing on the social determinants of health and working to implement policies, systems and environmental changes that make the healthy choices easy. Here are some examples of our public health prevention priorities for the [...]
When we implemented our Salt Initiative earlier this year we asked people to know their blood pressure and consider reducing their sodium intake by shopping more carefully and preparing recipes that are lower in sodium. One of the main messages was to encourage people to know their own blood pressure. Then it occurred to me- [...]
As predicted by our 1990 ADHS Vital Statistics Bureau in 1990- cancer is now the number one killer in Arizona – surpassing heart disease. Does this mean that cancer is getting worse? Probably not- it really says that because of better management, treatment, and prevention of heart disease- people with heart conditions are living longer. [...]
All this week, I'm talking about the five "winnable battles" in public health as laid out by the new CDC Director - Dr. Thomas Frieden. Dr. Frieden talked about focusing its strategic planning on public health and policy interventions to help win the 5 “Winnable Battles” in the next 3 years. There’s not much on [...]
High blood pressure is at the source of roughly one in six deaths among adults annually. About one in three adult Arizonans have blood pressure that’s too high, putting huge economic demands on Medicaid, Medicare (AHCCCS) and our private health insurers (plus, of course, the loss of life). The Institute of Medicine put out a [...]
