Arizona’s 2026 Legislative Session & Ballot Propositions: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly—A Public Health Perspective
AZPHA Coffee & Conversations Arizona’s 2026 Legislative Session & Ballot Propositions: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly—A Public Health Perspective Arizona’s 2026 legislative session produced some meaningful public-health wins, several important gubernatorial vetoes and a state budget that will directly affect Medicaid and food-assistance programs. Now, voters will face 11 statewide ballot propositions this fall—including measures affecting mail voting, school vouchers, public-employee unions, traffic-safety cameras and school funding. Join
A Political Irony: How Ducey & Brewer Locked In Napolitano’s Agency Regulations
There’s an Arizona twist to state agency rulemaking that I’ve never quite understood. Both the Brewer & Ducey administrations put handcuffs on agency directors when it comes to rulemaking. Each issued Executive Orders saying that agencies even start on a new rule unless they went through a cumbersome review process and got approval from the governor’s office. A nearly impossible feat. Brewer’s moratorium had an odd but predictable effect: it
Public Health Policies Have a Shelf Life: Laws, Regulations, & Executive Orders
Kennedy, the president & Congress have made plenty of decisions that are damaging to public health over the last 1.6 years. Some reduce access to healthcare. Others weaken environmental protections, end important research or replace evidence-based decisions with political ideology. But not all bad policies are equally durable. One way to assess the long-term risk (or benefits) of the actions that they’ve taken is to look at which approach they took. Did
How Birds, Mosquitoes & Monsoons Drive West Nile
Maricopa County is having an active West Nile virus season. As of last week, we had 47 human cases and five deaths. 183 mosquito trap samples have tested positive, already more than during all of 2025… and we have a few months to go. Birds Are the Reservoir People get West Nile virus from the bite of an infected mosquito. But mosquitoes don’t get the virus from people. They get
Privatizing Inmate Healthcare: A Cautionary Tale for Policymakers
Last week Arizona officially lost control of health care in its state prisons when Judge Roslyn Silver (US Judge) appointed Annette Chambers-Smith as the receiver responsible for managing medical and mental-health care for the state of Arizona’s more than 25,000 inmates in state-run prisons. Ex-Ohio prisons chief to handle Arizona prison health care To understand how we got here, we gotta go back 15 years to a policy decision made
The Peptide Fad: Caveat Emptor
I’m a bit slow when it comes to learning about popular culture and ‘wellness’ fads. But a drive-time piece from NPR this week about this peptide wellness fad captured my attention. Does the science of peptides live up to the hype? In the piece I learned FDA was having advisory committee hearings this week to recommend whether the FDA should legitimize the current ‘gray market’ for untested & unlicensed peptides