We shouldn’t wait until a patient is admitted to the emergency department to treat them for mental health issues like anxiety and depression. 2022 showed the highest number of deaths by suicide on record, with an adjusted suicide rate that increased by 16%. Part of this increase can be attributed to cyberbullying, which, according to the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System results, around 16% of high school students experienced within 12 months before the 2021 survey.

Quitting is difficult but not impossible. Convenient access to support systems and resources makes quitting a little easier. Joy Gray, branch chief of Be Well Arkansas, the state’s tobacco prevention and cessation program funded by the Arkansas Department of Health, recently went on AFMC TV to discuss a 24/7 call center anyone can call to help quit. Be Well Arkansas provides this and many other services to help ease the journey to quitting for the 20.5% of the population who smoke and the 26.3% of high schoolers who use tobacco, according to the American Lung Association.

For the last three years, my family has cared for my grandmother at her home by cooking her meals, ensuring she takes her medication, and socializing with her. While caregiving has improved my grandmother’s quality of life, it was more taxing at first than we thought, often being an expensive, lengthy, and stressful part of our day. Now, we’ve developed a caregiving plan that includes others who can help manage certain tasks. This ensures my grandmother gets the help she needs while also allowing us, her primary caregivers, to manage our own lives.

You don’t have your meals in a public restroom. Why should your baby? Despite the U.S. passing several laws protecting the rights of childbearing women, several restaurants, stores, and small businesses do not have dedicated spots for childbearing women to pump or breastfeed. Rabbit Ridge Farm, a family-owned business in Bee Branch, Arkansas, recognized a need for their childbearing customers to have a private nook exclusively for this purpose. While building and raising awareness for the nook has been hard, it has sent important messages to the business’s clientele: you are welcome, you are safe, and you are important.

During the pandemic, the U.S. lessened restrictions on providers practicing medicine via telehealth in a state in which they were not licensed. While this did cause controversy in the medical community, it also allowed patients who were not able to be seen in their home state to be referred virtually to another provider out of state to have their medical needs met. Since the Public Health Emergency (PHE) has ended, these restrictions are now back to where they were pre-COVID, meaning that providers must now be licensed in the state in which they practice medicine, even if they are doing so virtually. Currently, 30 states in the U.S. restrict inter-state telehealth referrals and practice.

In Arkansas, every 5 hours, a baby is born with a birth defect. Collecting, analyzing, and tracking data on birth defects, which has been a state law since 1985, allows policymakers, scientists, and healthcare professionals to understand the trends, causes, and impacts of birth defects on Arkansans and modify their services to better serve those in need. The Arkansas Reproductive Health Monitoring System (ARHMS) is a public health program that collects and tracks birth defect data in the state. While ARHMS consists of a small team, they play a critical role in public health research and the type of care and treatment children with birth defects receive.