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.

Author Jack Gilbert will be the Arizona Bioethics Network’s presenter for its December 1 EthicsTalk webinar. Strengthening Ethical Wisdom: Doing the Right Thing Everyday, will no doubt draw on Gilbert’s 2007 book of similar name and the lessons of the intervening years. ABN’s monthly webinar series has proven to be a great opportunity to connect, [...]

The well-worn phrase isn’t making enough of a dent. It turns out that only one-in-five children ages 2-5 are eating three or more vegetables a day. That’s according to Arizona Health Survey findings in October’s Healthy Eating and Active Living report. Get a window into the “what” and “how” of the rise of chronic conditions [...]

Are in the future of health care, if you follow the implications of a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine. Analyzing the post 2006 healthcare reform situation in Massachusetts – an influential model for the national Accountable Care Act (ACA) passed in 2010– researchers found an increase of 18.4 percent in administrative [...]

Can save lives and reduce unnecessary medical expenses, as the Methodist Le Bonheur hospital system in Memphis discovered when they started using trained volunteer liaisons at 376 local churches to track fellow congregants upon admission and discharge. Compared to patients who weren’t tracked, the hospital system saved $4 million, slashed mortality by 50 percent, and [...]

If you want broader choice of doctors in the future, you can expect to pay more for it. UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest insurer by revenues, recently announced the purchase of the managing arm of a 2,300-physician group in Orange County, California – their third such purchase in that county over the past two years. [...]