This week marks the beginning of the 2023 legislative session. The kickoff will be the Governor Hobbs’ State of the State address to the legislature at 2pm today when she’ll outline what he sees as priorities. It’ll be held in the House of Representatives and is generally open to the public (in the top gallery) buy you’d need to get there early. Visit the governor’s official website for details: Office of the Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs

Our Advocacy Approach

AzPHA will follow the session closely and express our support or opposition to bills based on a simple core principle…  we support bills that will have a positive impact on public health especially when they are evidence-based or evidence-informed.  We will oppose bills that are likely to have a negative impact on public health.  Our support or opposition to bills is located on the https://www.azleg.gov/ site under RTS Current Bill Positions.

We have a host of Resolutions that also guide our advocacy which are posted on the members only website and on our main website as well. The fact that we have Resolutions on so many core public health priorities make it easy for us to be swift with our support or opposition. Our Resolutions go all the way back to the 1930s. They are initiated by either the Board or our members and all resolutions have been voted on and approved by our members.

Our Public Health Policy Committee has a discussion board on Basecamp and that’s also where we post information, research and documents related to public health policy.  Let me know if you’d like to sign up for that Basecamp site at [email protected].

Our policy committee also has conference calls every Friday afternoon from 2 to 2:30 on Zoom (for members). Links to the meetings are in our Public Health Policy Committee Basecamp. Members can email [email protected] to get access to our Basecamp.