Outsiders looking in, this one is for you. The Arizona Bioethics Network’s webinar series marks a year’s worth of successful sessions by holding one for the hidden neophyte in all of us titled Medical Ethics for the Beginner…the Befuddled…the Bewildered: Where to Start?

Watch this: a visually compelling, greatly simplified, dramatically poignant take on the food system packed into a two-and-a-half minute video nutshell. (Plus, Willie Nelson singing a song by the band ColdPlay, which is one of the more amusing musical tricks pulled off in some time.) Some will note cynically that this production is funded by [...]

Arizona, affectionately dubbed “the baby of the great family” when it became the 48th state, turns 100 this month looking less like a baby and more like a somewhat crazy, gun-toting uncle (we are one of two states with an official state gun). National media coverage of Arizona has most recently featured a polarizing sheriff, [...]

Those searching for the next health improvement ‘silver bullet’ are advised by Dan Buettner of the Blue Zones Project℠ to consider “silver buckshot:” creating healthy communities by integrating policy, built environment, social networks, structural context and people’s sense of purpose. Buettner calls ‘bullets’ like individual responsibility and the diet/exercise combination insufficient on their own, pointing [...]

If a family that’s been tightening its belt comes upon a little extra cash, would it typically use it to pay off the mortgage or take care of the kids? That question crossed our minds when the FY ‘13 Executive Budget proposed allocating some of Arizona’s current budget surplus funds toward buying back Capitol buildings [...]

The effects of the Great Recession and associated budget cuts are playing out in emergency rooms across the country, according to a Reuters report that spanned from Seattle to Boston with stops in Chicago and smaller areas like Grand Rapids, Winston-Salem in between. It reveals what poor cost-shifting decisions look like in real time, and [...]

Temperatures are dropping as December rolls on and the court appeals run out related to the state’s Medicaid freeze for adults covered by Proposition 204. Last week the Arizona Court of Appeals upheld the legislature’s decision to reverse the ten-year-old, voter-approved proposition. Meanwhile, some 30,000 children have lost KidsCare coverage and 129,000 remain on the [...]

Christmas came early for Arizona when it received a $30 million grant from the federal government to implement a state health insurance exchange. Sort of. They say time is money. Here’s hoping they’re right, because time is the one thing every state needs to get a functioning exchange established. SLHI staff just returned from Washington [...]

Arizona has its share of food deserts – geographic spaces that lack ready access to healthy, affordable foods – and a Chicago nonprofit has a replicable option for addressing them. Fresh Moves is a mobile produce market built into the interior of a converted bus. The bus currently makes 15 hour-long stops a day offering [...]

It is no secret that transitions are hard. Even with exciting new opportunities. As SLHI transitions leadership, incoming President and CEO Fred Karnas delivers some initial thoughts on coming home and what the future holds. Read more.