This week the Governor signed an Executive Order establishing the Governor’s Council on Infectious Disease Preparedness and Response. The Council consists of 20 public health, health-care, and other multi-sectorial partners, with the ADHS Director as the Chair. Our task will be to ensure that Arizona is prepared to rapidly and effectively respond to various infectious [...]
With our Annual Report coming up soon, I was surfing the web to get some ideas last night and ran across our 1920 ADHS Annual Report. Call me a public health geek, but I couldn’t put my iPad down. The Annual Report covers our agency activities that year- things like our new (1919) Midwifery regulations, [...]
You might remember from a few weeks ago that a single patient exposed over 1,000 Arizonans to measles. Because measles is highly infectious and 90% of unvaccinated contacts become infected, Public Health worked overtime to identify and interview suspected cases. Health care facilities were placed on heightened alert. The State Laboratory rushed testing of suspicious [...]
Our Licensing team routinely analyzes the most frequent and important deficiencies that we observe when we conduct inspections at our licensed facilities. We use the data to help educate the folks that we license… and to identify topics for provider training and technical assistance (public health interventions). For example, our medical facilities licensing team has found that infection control [...]
… that is the question- at least when it comes to whether to take standard measures to decolonize intensive care patients with antibiotic ointments in their nose to remove Staphylococcus bugs. Hospital associated infections are a critical public health and healthcare cost problem. While we’re losing ground in our fight against obesity- we’re making progress [...]
Over the past two years, folks in ITS and Epidemiology and Disease Control have been working together to enhance our state’s electronic communicable disease surveillance system called MEDSIS. This week the new version of MEDSIS went live. Major enhancements include the integration of tuberculosis reporting, case management and surveillance; expanded case management capabilities for all diseases; [...]
At the core- vaccines are really about community protection. Our public health system depends on a solid network of providers that are available to vaccinate kids for all of the nasty infectious diseases that have plagued humanity for millennium. It’s not just access to care and a solid network of providers that vaccinate that are [...]
Please join me in welcoming Cara Christ, MD as our new Division of Licensing Services chief. Cara has agreed to share her talents as the new Assistant Director for Licensing as well as serving as the Agency Chief Medical Officer. Also, thanks a million to Colby Bower who's been doing an excellent job serving as interim director for licensing since Alan [...]
A decade ago, AZ launched a plan to create an internationally competitive bioscience sector. This roadmap is the long-term plan to combine leaders in business, basic sciences & research, and political entities in order to create an infrastructure and climate that would be ideal to propel AZ forward in the biosciences. The Flinn Foundation invested in [...]
… is often the question when it comes to common indoor air quality questions or in response to a communicable disease outbreak (or diagnoses) in the workplace. The answer is not to sample (almost without exception). A good case study came up this week when a library and high school were closed after some environmental [...]
