HHS launched a new web portal providing important health and health care indicator data. The Health Indicators Warehouse represents a vast collection of health and health care indicators like determinants of health, health care access, cost, quality, and use. Health indicator can be searched for specific populations, places, political jurisdictions, and geographic areas. The Warehouse [...]
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 [...]
Approximately 20,000 folks are seen in the AZ emergency departments for a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Of these 1,000 die and 4,500 are hospitalized. At least 2% of the U.S. population has a TBI-related long-term need for help to perform activities of daily living. So, needless to say, brain injury is a major public health issue. There’s growing [...]
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 [...]
On January 15, 2011, the Governor released her proposed budget for next fiscal year, which begins July 1, 2011. Our part of the budget in the link above is on pages 105 through 111. You kinda need to be a budgeteer to understand some of it, so I’ll try to distill it down a little [...]
Respiratory syncytial virus (or RSV) is another respiratory infection that mainly affects little kids and circulates every year. It occurs in the winter, like flu, but flu and RSV usually don’t peak at the same time. Since our flu season is early this year, it looks like our RSV season may be a little later [...]
The new Phoenix-Collaborative MPH in Public Health Practice program as well as a distance learning Graduate Certificate in Public Health are two great options for individuals looking to advance their knowledge about public health. The Master of Public Health in Public Health Practice is a new interdisciplinary program that prepares students to develop the public [...]
The US Department of Health and Human Services is in line to receive $11 Billion in funding over the next 5 years for the operation, expansion and construction of health centers nationwide. These funds will be made available through a nationwide competitive grant application process. Our Bureau of Health Systems Development is the Arizona designated [...]
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 [...]
Every year that goes by brings more solid information suggesting that the body mass index (BMI) may become the future leading health indicator. If you’re wondering what BMI is; it’s your weight in kilograms (Kg) divided by the square of your height in meters (m2). There’s solid evidence that BMIs in the upper 20s and [...]
