This is Valley Fever Awareness Week- an annual event to provide awareness of coccidioidomycosis (also known as Valley Fever)- the second most commonly reported infectious disease in Arizona. Events for the general public include a “Learn about Valley Fever – Ask the Doctor Your Questions” held in Tucson on Sunday, Nov. 6 and the Walk for Valley Fever in Sun [...]
You can think of the border public health advocacy network as a binational matrix of public health partners that collaborate to improve conditions along the US-Mexico border. The network includes national organizations like the U.S.-Mexico Border Health Commission along with state based partnerships like the Arizona-Mexico Commission and the annual U.S.-Mexico Border Governor’s Conference. Community based binational partnerships [...]
Making good decisions about prioritizing which public health issues to tackle and how to target our interventions rests on our ability to collect and analyze public health data. For infectious disease surveillance that means have a base of solid reporting and surveillance so we can analyze infectious disease trends. For chronic diseases, we need to [...]
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 [...]
A few weeks ago I blogged about the June plenary session of the Arizona Mexico Commission called Arizona & Sonora: Gateway for Innovation. The conference provided an opportunity to move forward a bi-national agenda supported by Arizona and Sonora. The health committee discussed regional approaches to valley fever surveillance, burn patient infrastructure, substance abuse, TB, border [...]
He’s a guy that’s often thought of as the founder of modern day epidemiology because of his work in tracing the source of a cholera outbreak in England in the mid 1800s. At the time, scientists and the public believed that diseases like cholera were spread by “miasma”- basically that diseases like cholera were spread [...]
I’m glad to announce that Rodgers Wilson, MD is our permanent Behavioral Health Medical Director. Dr. Wilson oversees the clinical/prevention and quality management/medical management areas of our behavioral health system. He has spearheaded Quarterly Health Initiatives that address common physical health needs among individuals with behavioral health illnesses and is currently developing collaborative training programs [...]
Throughout history, mankind’s future was largely determined by fate. Infectious diseases like Diphtheria and Smallpox could wipe out an entire family in just a few days. People were vulnerable to outside threats ranging from a lack of clean drinking water to poor sanitation to gaps in environmental infrastructure that led to a host of infectious [...]
