Will Humble Social Determinants, Wills Blog

Know Your Rights in Arizona: A New State Resource to Protect You & Your Neighbors from ICE and CBP

With only weeks to go before ICE and CBP may descend on Arizona en masse – it’s important for people to know their rights when they’re being profiled, challenged and detained by agents.  

As such, Governor Hobbs launched a new state website called Know Your Rights this week which outlines the rights people have during those interactions.

When federal agents come into towns or neighborhoods, people can feel scared, confused, or unsure of what to do. Knowing rights ahead of time makes it easier to act calmly and protect yourself, your family, and your neighbors.

Here are some of the key things the new resource walks you through:

1. Your right to remain silent

You don’t have to answer questions about your immigration status, where you were born, or how you entered the country. Staying calm and quiet can protect you legally.

2. Your right to refuse entry into your home

ICE and other agents cannot just walk into your house. They must have a valid warrant signed by a judge — not just anything they claim is a warrant. You can ask to see it before you open your door.

3. Your right to ask for a lawyer

If you’re stopped, detained, or questioned, you have the right to a lawyer. You can say, “I want to speak with a lawyer,” and then remain silent until you do.

4. Your rights as a protester or observer

Arizona law recognizes the right to peacefully protest, observe law enforcement, and express views — as long as it stays lawful and non-violent.

Protect Yourself and Others

Take a few minutes today to visit: Home | Know Your Rights and become familiar with these rights before you ever need them.

Knowing what you’re legally entitled to do — and when to stay silent — can make all the difference in a frightening moment. It’s a tool that every Arizonan should carry in their head and heart.

Will Humble Nutrition, Social Determinants, Wills Blog

Who are Most Affected by the New SNAP Rules?

Adults age 55–64 w/o dependents

This age group is newly subject to SNAP work requirements. Many are close to retirement age but may still be classified as “able-bodied” under the law.

Rural Arizonans

SNAP participation is highest in rural counties that vote reliably Republican, where job availability and transportation are often limited. Tighter waiver rules (for high local unemployment rates) make it harder to waive ‘work’ requirements in these areas.

Veterans, people experiencing homelessness, former foster youth

These groups lost exemptions and must now meet work requirements unless they qualify for another documented exemption.

Parents of teenagers (ages 14–17)

Parents are no longer automatically exempt once their youngest child turns 14. Caregiving alone no longer protects eligibility.

Older adults with chronic conditions

People with health issues may still be considered able-bodied if they lack formal disability documentation, increasing the risk of losing benefits.

What Counts as ‘Work’?

Work Requirements for Able-Bodied Adult Without Dependents | Arizona Department of Economic Security

  • Paid work: Normal job for at least 20 hours per week;
  • Volunteer work: Unpaid work (including “work-for-food” or service in exchange for goods/services);
  • Self-employment: Subsistence or informal work can sometimes count depending on the kind and what documentation they have;
  • Participation in a qualifying work program: Enrollment in programs like Employment & Training, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act programs

Example: A 63-year-old woman volunteers at her church 20 hours per week. She is now subject to the work requirements to get her benefits. She counts the money from the collection plates and works in the kitchen to prepare meals on Sunday mornings.

If the church can verify her hours and they are documented – they probably would satisfy the ‘work’ requirement. Simply attending church services or taking part in activities without a clear volunteer work part doesn’t count.

Note: This person still needs to document and prove she’s doing the work. For example, she’ll need a written statement from her church showing she does 20 hours of work per week. She must make sure ADES gets the information. A self-attestation that she’s doing the volunteer work isn’t enough.

Will Humble Public Health, Social Determinants, Wills Blog

SNAP’s New Work Rules Are Here: What’s Changing and Who’s Impacted

About 900K of Arizonans currently get SNAP food aid (about 12% of the population) but SNAP participation isn’t uniform.

Dark-red rural counties like Mohave and Gila counties have much higher SNAP participation rates than urban areas. About 30% of people in rural areas get SNAP aid. Urban places like the Phoenix and Tucson are closer to 10%.

This week new federal SNAP rules from H.R. 1 took effect, expanding work requirements and restricting exemptions. For the most part, HR1 didn’t change the actual requirements – rather it mostly affects who are subject to the requirements.

Changes Implemented this Week

The biggest change is the expanded work requirements by age. Previously, federal (and state) SNAP work rules applied only to “able-bodied” adults without dependents between 18–54. Under H.R. 1, that upper age limit increased to 64.

From now on, adults ages 55–64 who meet the technical definition of “able-bodied” need to meet the requirements or lose their benefits after a few months.

Under SNAP law, “able-bodied” means being physically and mentally capable of working and not qualifying for a specific exemption. Exceptions include having a verified disability, being pregnant, or caring for a child under age 14 (but these must be proven). Many people with chronic health conditions may still be classified as able-bodied without formal documentation.

For those subject to it, the work requirement stays at least 80 hours per month of work, volunteering, or approved training, or about 20 hours a week.

H.R. 1 also ended several exemptions from the work requirements that used to exist. Veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and young adults who aged out of foster care aren’t automatically exempt from work rules. Also, parents with children age 14–17 now need to meet work requirements (previously any parent with a child under 18 was exempt).

It’s also harder for states to ask for waivers from the work requirements for areas that have very few jobs. States can only get a geographic waiver if the area has an unemployment above 10%.

Will Humble Healthcare, Maternal Health, Wills Blog

State Turns in Revised Rural Health Transformation Grant Proposal

When HR1 was signed into law last summer it extended big tax breaks for high income people & corporations while reducing federal funding for Medicaid, SNAP, and other core public health programs.

Those cuts (especially to Medicaid) will eventually have long-term bad impacts on rural hospitals (urban hospitals are less exposed because they have less exposure to Medicaid and a more diverse payer mix).

In the coming years, the HR1 cuts will weaken rural hospital finances. Some will cut or end services like labor and delivery. Others may be forced to close altogether, but only after they cut services that don’t ‘pay for themselves’ (like labor and delivery).

To offset those coming effects (or I would argue to provide political cover), Congress set up the Rural Health Transformation Program. The program gives $10B per year for five years across the US (FY 2026–2030). Arizona’s share is $100M per year (for 5 years).

Arizona turned in our first application for our part a few months ago. CMS reduced Arizona’s first-year award by about $33M (from $200M to $167M). While it always sucks to take a cut from what you thought you were getting, the Governor’s Office responded in a disciplined and thoughtful way as they developed their Plan B application.

The Revised Resubmitted Plan preserved the important long-term spine of the initial strategy (especially rural education and training) while trimming the most immediate workforce part (immediate financial incentives for rural practice). They also proposed scaling back some systems investments like technical aid and technology upgrades. See the budget line items

What I liked most about the original proposal: it wasn’t just a collection of short-term work (although some of it was). AZ’s plan leaned more into longer-term capacity building, especially rural healthcare workforce development.

Workforce: Long Term Pipeline Protected | Short-Term Incentives Cut

The revised budget mostly preserved the training and education pipeline, which is encouraging. The single largest workforce line item (Rural Education and Training Expansion) stays at $32M. Funding for critical rural residency support, provider upskilling, and training capacity grants also stay intact, as does support for statewide workforce coordination and learning networks (a total of $47M).

Arizona rural health plan cuts $33M, focuses on workforce

The cuts landed hardest on the most immediate and direct recruitment (but also relatively short-term) retention tool: financial incentives for rural practice. That line item was cut from $15M to $8M.

The revised plan still builds the long-term future workforce but does less to provide immediate help. That’s OK with me – I’d rather see robust long term and sustainable solutions survive even if shorter term recruitment stuff gets cut.

Shorter Term Interventions

Several major program areas were largely protected in the revision. Short-term funding for behavioral health and substance-use services, chronic disease prevention, and maternal-fetal health remained unchanged at a combined $27M. This is all important – but it doesn’t provide a long-term sustainable impact (but will temporarily enhance services in these areas).

The diagnostic, technical and IT (“Resilience”) side of the plan took a relatively big cut (from $50M down to $38M). Investments in EHR modernization, diagnostic equipment, shared services, and technical aid were scaled back, but still large. I’m glad they cut this part instead of making cuts to the residency and healthcare workforce pipeline work.

Summary

Arizona’s revised Rural Health Transformation Plan mostly focused on what matters most over the long haul: building and sustaining a rural health workforce rather than chasing short-term fixes.

The exception is the funding for behavioral health and substance-use services, chronic disease prevention, and maternal-fetal health remained – which stays unchanged from the first application (a combined $27M). This is important work but doesn’t provide a long-term sustainable system impact (but will temporarily enhance services in these areas).

Importantly, the revised application meaningfully improves accountability by shifting more oversight and implementation responsibility away from the relatively small and non-health-related Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity to AHCCCS, an agency with scale, experience, and operational capacity to issue and evaluate RFPs, contract amendments, IGAs/grants, competitive RGAs, examine invoices and hold grant recipients accountable etc.)

That change increases the likelihood that this grant will move beyond planning documents and into real execution and will more likely hold recipients accountable.

Revised Project Narrative
See the budget line items

Editorial Note: The Governor’s Office did a nice job with this revised application – both in terms of what they trimmed, protected and changed operationally. If I could change one thing in the grant it would have been to provide resources needed for the NAU Medical School (which focused on primary care in rural areas) off the ground. I’m not sure if that would be an allowed expense under the RHT program or not though.

Important Note: A poison pill overshadows the entire Rural Health Transformation program. Back in December CMS Administrator Oz said he & Kennedy intend to “claw back” RHT dollars if states don’t embrace Kennedy’s broader agenda, including anti-vaccine positions and nutrition initiatives like restricting what foods can be bought with SNAP benefits.

Will Humble Disease Control, Public Health, Vaccination, Wills Blog

Public Health Journalism this Week

Measles cases soar as politicians target vaccines | Arizona Capitol Times

A children’s doctor on the crisis of medical trust | Arizona Capitol Times

Judge: Arizona abortion laws are unconstitutional after 2024 amendment

Arizona Democrats press Kristi Noem on ICE measles cases

UA researchers find the number of heat-related 911 calls is growing

ABA therapy costs are soaring. Observers say poor regulations don’t protect AZ kids with autism

Will Humble Public Health, Wills Blog

CDC Abandons Multiple Public Health Databases

Federal public health surveillance data supports clinical guidance, public health policy and practice and health system planning. We all rely on it to monitor disease trends, evaluate interventions, and respond to emerging threats. When these data systems aren’t maintained, evidence-based decision-making suffers.

So, it won’t surprise you that since Kennedy assumed leadership at HHS a host of CDC public data systems have been abandoned and are now stagnant with no updates.

Among CDC databases that were previously updated monthly, 46% are now stagnant. Of the databases classified as stagnant or abandoned, 89% have no data entries within the past six months. Most notably, 87% of the stagnant databases are related to vaccination or infectious diseases – making it obvious that this isn’t just incompetence- it’s malfeasance.

Unexplained Pauses in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Surveillance: Erosion of the Public Evidence Base for Health Policy | Annals of Internal Medicine

The responsibility for supporting federal surveillance capacity rests with departmental leadership. Under Kennedy’s tenure, CDC has experienced significant staff losses and programmatic disruption, particularly in areas related to immunization and infectious disease.

Federal data systems that once provided prompt, standardized information are no longer doing so. This weakens situational awareness for states and local health departments, complicates clinical guidance, and degrades the evidence base for health policy.

Public health surveillance depends on consistent leadership support and insulation from political ideology. Under Secretary Kennedy’s approach has resulted in a measurable erosion of CDC’s data function, with consequences for clinical care, public health practice, and policy development.

Perhaps in 3 years we can dig out of this hole, but it will be hard.

Will Humble Air Quality, Environmental Health

Ending Monetization of Health Benefits EPA Changes How It Sets Air Quality Standards

This week, the EPA said they’ll be changing how it will evaluate future clean air regulations. They’ll stop monetizing the health benefits of air-pollution reductions like avoided hospitalizations, reduced health-care costs, and premature deaths prevented when conducting cost-benefit analyses for major air rules.

For decades, EPA has included these estimates when evaluating pollution standards under the Clean Air Act. While the Act requires EPA to base national ambient air quality standards on public-health protection rather than cost, cost-benefit analyses have long been used to inform rulemaking, defend regulations in court, and explain policy choices to the public.

Under the new approach, EPA says they’ll consider health impacts but won’t assign them a dollar value in regulatory analyses. Instead, EPA will focus its economic analysis primarily on compliance costs to regulated industries.

This change matters because monetized health benefits have historically dwarfed regulatory costs in clean-air rules. Assigning dollar values to avoided asthma attacks, heart disease, and early deaths has helped show that stronger standards produce net economic benefits.

EPA is not yet finalizing a wholesale rollback of national ambient air quality standards. But, this week’s announcement signals that they’re preparing to release a new rulemaking to relax at least particulate and ozone standards in the coming weeks or months – and that they’ll dismiss the health part of the equation as they set the standards.

That said, this policy choice isn’t permanent. A different administration in three years could reverse course and restore monetized health analyses. If that happens, the result may be a temporary period of a year or two of weaker standards, followed by a return to more health-protective approaches.

Will Humble Healthcare, Immigration Policy, Social Determinants, Wills Blog

Public Health, Human Rights & Federal Immigration Enforcement: Why We Took a Stand

Last week the AZPHA Board of Directors issued a formal statement condemning unchecked violence and systemic civil-liberties violations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

It wasn’t just a statement. We also urged Senators Kelly and Gallego to use their leverage in the upcoming Department of Homeland Security funding process to condition any approval of funds on verifiable accountability, independent oversight, and enforceable protections for civil and human rights.

See our letter to Senator Gallego

See our letter to Senator Kelly

Recent events underscore why this matter rises to the level of a public health crisis. In Minneapolis, federal immigration enforcement operations have been trampling human rights with multiple illegal use-of-force incidents, including the fatal shootings.

Those deaths, illegal use of brute force, and wholesale gross violations of civil liberties have sparked widespread protests, political outcry, and calls for investigations into enforcement tactics that often violate civil liberties and constitutional rights.

ICE and CBP agents are conducting warrantless arrests, racial profiling, indiscriminately using chemical agents, and using intimidation tactics that violate activities protected by the 1st Amendment like observing and recording law enforcement in public.

From a public health perspective, fear-based enforcement, racial profiling, and unaccountable use of force undermine the social determinants of health. They deter individuals from seeking medical care, accessing community services, and engaging in civic life without fear of abuse or retaliation. These patterns worsen mental health stressors and deteriorate community trust in institutions fundamental to health and wellbeing.

In our statement, we urged Senators Kelly and Gallego to withhold approval of any DHS budget that would sustain ICE and CBP at current or expanded levels until reforms are enacted that include:

  • Independent and transparent oversight mechanisms outside DHS chains of command;
  • Clear, legally enforceable limits on the use of force;
  • Protections for children and families during enforcement actions;
  • Independent accountability processes for agents accused of rights violations;
  • Compliance with hiring practices used by all the other federal agencies, substantially enhanced training with focus on de-escalation, rights protection, and public health impacts; and
  • Appropriate (retroactive) qualification standards for hiring and keeping ICE and CBP personnel.

Even if these reforms were satisfied, AzPHA’s Board urged that Senators limit funding to FY 2024 levels to constrain their operational capacity until the verifiable accountability measures are in place and functioning.

This advocacy is firmly grounded in AzPHA’s long-standing, member-approved policy positions. Our members have consistently recognized that violence, the misuse of force, and the absence of accountability are public health failures, regardless of whether that force is exercised by a private actor or the state itself.

In 2019, we adopted a resolution identifying firearm violence as a preventable public health problem, emphasizing evidence-based prevention, accountability, and harm reduction as essential tools to protect communities (Gun Safety Resolution, 2019).

Humble discusses AZPHA’s statement about immigration, human rights and public health | Arizona Horizon PBS

In 2023, our members further affirmed that systemic racism is a public health crisis, acknowledging that discriminatory policies and enforcement practices produce measurable harm to health, safety, and life expectancy (Structural Racism Resolution, 2023).

From AzPHA’s perspective, demanding accountability for ICE and CBP is a direct extension of the same public health principles that guide our work on violence prevention limiting harm, preventing abuse of power, and protecting the conditions that allow communities to thrive.

We’ll continue to scrutinize federal agency practices and to advocate for policies that protect health, rights, and dignity for all residents of Arizona.

Will Humble Behavioral Health, Professional Development, Public Health, Wills Blog

Call for Presentations – AZPHA Conference – From Crisis to Care: Improving Outcomes in Arizona’s Behavioral Health System

Call for Presentations

AZPHA 2026 Conference
From Crisis to Care: Improving Outcomes in Arizona’s Behavioral Health System

Friday, May 1, 2026
Desert Willow Conference Center | Phoenix, Arizona

Conference Tracks & Topic Areas

The Arizona Public Health Association invites proposals for presentations at our 2026 Annual Conference, focused on improving care and treatment for people with mental and behavioral health needs in Arizona.

Many sessions will be grounded in Arizona’s Medicaid behavioral health system and its intersection with public health, housing, courts, and community-based care.

Track A: Policy, Advocacy, and Systems Change

Track B: Population-Specific Needs – Serious Mental Illness

Track C: Integrated Care and Community Well-Being

Track D: Crisis System, Court-Ordered Evaluation & Treatment

Track E: Maternal Mental Health & Perinatal Care

What We’re Looking For

We welcome proposals from public-health professionals, clinicians, policymakers, researchers, advocates, people with lived experience, and system leaders.

Priority will be given to sessions that are evidence-based, practice-focused, and relevant to Arizona.

Emphasis on practical, replicable approaches is encouraged. 

  • Sessions exploring how public policy, financing, informatics including the applications of artificial intelligence, and system design can improve and shape access to behavioral health care in Arizona. 
  • Presentations focused on care models and supports for people with serious mental illness, including permanent supportive housing, assertive community treatment, peer & family support, and transitions from institutional to community-based care. 
  • Sessions highlighting models that integrate behavioral health into primary care and community settings, including crisis-prevention strategies that reduce reliance on emergency departments and law enforcement.
  • Presentations addressing Arizona’s crisis response and civil commitment systems, including emergency response, stabilization, court-ordered evaluation and treatment, legal considerations, system bottlenecks, and opportunities for improved coordination.
  • Sessions focused on maternal mental health during pregnancy and the postpartum period, including screening, treatment, continuity of care, and Medicaid’s role in improving access and reducing disparities for birthing people and families.
Presentation proposals are due by Monday, February 9, 2026
  • One presenter per accepted session will receive free conference registration.
  • One additional presenter on the same session will be eligible for the discounted student registration rate.

Submit Your Proposal Here! 

 

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