In 1996, the Arizona Legislature charged our universities, community colleges, and Board of Regents to collaborate to develop ways for students to seamlessly transfer from community colleges to universities. Meeting the higher education needs of our state was and is a priority of these three bodies. The Academic Program Articulation Steering Committee was formed as the cooperative body to carry out this charge. On behalf of the community colleges and Arizona Board of Regents, it prepares an annual report to the legislature on the progress toward improving articulation and transfer.

This report was compiled by members of the Injury Prevention Advisory Council Subcommittee on Violence. Its purpose is to present an overview of youth violence in Arizona, using data from the health care and criminal justice systems. Presenting both the health care and criminal justice perspectives presents a more comprehensive picture of youth violence and provides greater opportunities for developing solutions.

In the Arizona University System, research that leads to real innovations translates to technologies and products that improve lives and stimulate the economy. This report provides an in-depth and comprehensive review of Arizona's higher education research enterprise. It is designed to allow the reader to easily locate any single research metric for any of Arizona's three public universities and quickly compare each Arizona university's performance against those of its Board-approved peers.

In the 2009 report entitled "Vision 2020," the Arizona Board of Regents outlined the objective of raising Arizona to the national average of college graduates in the work force and moving Arizona to the status of a large scale center for academic research. This realignment plan outlines how both of these significant goals will be achieved in an era of more modest public investment.

The Arizona Board of Regents presents in this 2020 Vision a framework for the Arizona University System to improve the economic strength of our state and quality of life for Arizonans over the next 12 years. This plan lays out a series of touchstones for this ambition organized around four key themes: Educational Excellence, Research Excellence, Community Engagement and Workforce Impact, and Productivity. This plan builds on a foundation manifested in previous strategic planning efforts of the universities and the Board, including the establishment of a medical college in Phoenix, development of new health professions programs not offered by public institutions in the state, growth in the research enterprise, and increasingly intensive efforts to provide baccalaureate access to all regions of the state.

Since the release of the CDC’s recommendations to improve preconception health in 2006, the Arizona Department of Health Services and its partners across the state have made steady progress in improving awareness about preconception health and increasing access to preconception health services. The Bureau of Women’s and Children’s Health assessed internal programs serving women and children to identify opportunities for integrating preconception health education and services into program policies and procedures.

The Arizona Injury Surveillance and Prevention Plan establishes objectives and proposes strategic actions to avoid injury. The actions proposed are based on the knowledge that many seemingly accidental injuries could have been prevented by taking precautions, avoiding unnecessary risks, and/or enacting and enforcing laws such as drunk driving laws or seat belt laws.

While the economic environment in Arizona has gradually improved, vulnerable individuals and families rely on the Department for life-saving protective services and essential economic support. The Department has made important improvements in how we deliver benefits, goods and services to vulnerable individuals and families. The Plan outlines several of these on-going improvement efforts including cost-saving process improvements, expanded community collaborations, enhanced transparency and increased accountability.