Prior to 1967, Arizona had one of the highest infant mortality rates in the country. That year, in an effort to reduce the high infant mortality and morbidity rates, Arizona applied for and received a federal demonstration grant. The grant was designed to reduce infant death by transporting critically ill newborns born in rural hospitals into intensive care centers. As a result, there was a dramatic decrease in neonatal mortality. Part of that grant was to provide home based Community Nursing Services to the infants and their families. Community Health Nurses provided follow-up home visits for the NICP infants and their families up to one year of age.

The Project conducted a State‐level environmental scan to develop a more comprehensive picture of the early childhood‐serving environment in Arizona. An effort was made to identify current funds utilized across multiple State agencies that support programs to address the physical, emotional, social, cognitive, and behavioral health of children from birth to eight years of age. This report describes the landscape of systems, programs and other resources currently available in Arizona that are working to address challenges facing young children, birth to age eight, and their families.

Health Start is a neighborhood outreach program that helps high-risk pregnant women obtain early and consistent prenatal care and, for their children, timely immunizations. Its mission is to educate, support, and advocate for families at risk by promoting optimal use of community based family health and education services through the use of community health workers, who live in, and reflect the ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic characteristics of the community they serve.

In order to continue to provide crucial sexual violence prevention and education services to its statewide community, the Arizona Department of Health Services, Sexual Violence Prevention and Education Program began comprehensive planning in November 2006, the second year of a five-year funding cycle. The plan was developed as a means of achieving the vision of a culture that supports healthy, respectful relationships through primary prevention efforts and zero tolerance of sexual violence in Arizona communities.

Vision screening of children, unlike hearing screening, is not currently mandated by Arizona state law. The purpose of this document is to provide information, guidance and recommendations for implementing a vision screening program for children ages 3 and older in school and community settings. This document provides guidance and practical information on the screening process, appropriate screening tools, referral criteria and follow-up procedures.

During the mid-part of the last decade, when the population growth rate was at its highest, the Phoenix area experienced rapid development and urban sprawl. The result has been an intensification of the Urban Heat Island effect. In this edition of Decades, author Sally Wittlinger discusses this uncomfortable consequence of urbanization.

In a desert city such as Phoenix, summertime heat is a way of life, but how much does the built environment contribute to the intensity of the heat on a summer night? In urbanized Phoenix, nights don’t cool down as much as in the surrounding rural areas and on more and more summer nights, the official Phoenix temperature fails to drop below 90 degrees. Climate plays a huge role in the comfort and quality of life of residents, with numerous implications for tourism, energy demand, water use, and the vulnerability of low-income families.

Both the effect of climate change on our future water supply and the size of the population that will need to share in that supply are uncertainties that water planners must consider when making decisions regarding our future. We have options, but we have to be sure that we use water efficiently to meet our urban, agricultural, and environmental needs. This Policy Points offers a clear, succinct overview of the status of Arizona’s water supply and what the current drought really means for water availability.

As Arizona’s population continues to grow, so does the need for electricity. Retail sales of electricity in Arizona have increased along with the population, although sales per person have declined since peaking in 2007, a sign of decreased use and increased efficiency. As we progress in the twenty-first century, action must be taken to increase the sustainability of our energy resources by continuing to conserve and by shifting to the greater use of energy from renewable sources. In addition, we must work to mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.