May 3, 2012
By Farah Dosani – Avalon Elementary School students don’t have to go far to get fresh tomatoes, strawberries or green beans. They grow them all on school grounds in their ‘Global Garden.’ “Our project helps people be in a better community and be healthier. We plant stuff that can grow, and then we can eat it,” said Avalon third-grader Raul Diaz.
April 4, 2012
By Farah Dosani – Where we live matters to our health – according to a new report released this week. The 2012 County Health Rankings analyzes the health of nearly every county in the nation. Out of Florida’s 67 counties, St. Johns in the northeast part of the state ranked as the healthiest. Union County, just an hour and half west of St. Johns, ranked the lowest.
December 19, 2011
By Sammy Mack – Public transit is pedaling forward in South Florida. Despite its reputation for being an unfriendly place for bicyclists, Broward County has launched the first county-wide bicycle sharing program in the country. Twenty bike sharing stations with 200 bicycles have been spread out across the county – giving residents and visitors a healthy and green alternative to transit.
December 14, 2011
By Farah Dosani – Heart attacks in women don’t exactly play out the same way they do in men. “The old “‘Sanford & Son’ clutching the chest”, “a big one’s coming” are what a lot of people still imagine is a heart attack,” said Dr. Andy Oakes-Lottridge, a Fort Myers family physician. That’s often not the case – especially in women.
December 9, 2011
By Farah Dosani – HIV patient “Donell” (not his real name) was laid off from his job three years ago. “I [went from] making a lot of money to being pretty much homeless. My situation before the economic crisis was so much better. I don’t think I stand alone in that,” he said. “Once I lost my job, that’s when I had to go to places like the food bank.” Many Floridians living with HIV/AIDS were living at or below the poverty level before economic times became rough. Drug costs continue to rise and some patients have conditions that prevent them from working.
December 7, 2011
By Sammy Mack – A bill that would repeal a middle school physical education requirement is one step closer to making it though Florida’s next legislative session. House Bill 4057 would repeal a mandate that children in sixth through eighth grades take physical education classes. Tuesday, the bill passed 9-6 in the K-20 Innovation Subcommittee. To supporters, ending the requirement would ease pressures on overburdened schools. To opponents, the bill would exacerbate childhood obesity.
December 5, 2011
By Farah Dosani – Community agencies in Southwest Florida are starting up an initiative to improve health care for people in Immokalee. And they plan to do so by using the arts. The Florida Division of Cultural Affairs and University of Florida chose Immokalee as the latest site to develop an art in health care program. The initiative targets rural communities in Florida with widespread health issues that remain unaddressed.
December 2, 2011
By Sammy Mack – At a special mass for lawyers and judges in Tampa on Wednesday, Bishop Robert Lynch told parishioners that “2,300 employees of the Diocese of St. Petersburg will lose their health care coverage” if President Obama doesn’t widen exemptions to the Affordable Care Act. At issue: a requirement that health insurance plans cover contraception.
December 1, 2011
By Sammy Mack – In just three months, 3,378 Floridians living with HIV/AIDS have gotten the medications they need. That’s the number of people who had been on the waiting list for the state’s AIDS Drug Assistance Program. What an incredible announcement by the Florida Department of Health on World AIDS Day.
By Sammy Mack – Today marks the 23rd annual World AIDS Day and three decades into the pandemic, the Florida Department of Health is turning to the internet to humanize the impact of AIDS. The Virtual Memorial on WeMakeTheChange.com is a patchwork of user-submitted memorials. Each panel in the digital AIDS quilt consists of a name, a birth and death date, and an epitaph of 100 words or less.
November 30, 2011
By Farah Dosani & Kimberly Vlach – The holidays can be a rough time for people who have experienced the death of someone close to them – especially suicide survivors. “There was a lot of guilt on my part. As a mom, you want to protect your child. Any survivor is like that,” says Virginia Cervasio, Founder of C.A.R.E.S. Suicide Prevention in Fort Myers.
November 29, 2011
[VIDEO] By Farah Dosani – Cupboards stuffed with books, kitchens full of clothes, closets filled with silverware…Roxy Hambleton has seen at all. She has been working as a professional organizer for 10 years. “At first people are like, ‘What do you do?’ It’s still not quite understood completely,” she says.
November 23, 2011
By Sammy Mack – Just in time for Thanksgiving, we bring you a collection of articles that add up to one festively healthy holiday survival guide. From healthy road trip snacks to safely frying a turkey, we’ve got you covered.
By Sammy Mack – Last week, Congress reaffirmed pizza sauce as a vegetable serving in school lunches. This week, American families sit down to the kind of decadent meal for which health experts issue warnings. It’s during this season of mixed messages about nutritional priorities that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released a report on the fruit and vegetable habits of high school students. The results are, as CDC epidemiologist Dr. Sonia Kim puts it, “alarming.”
[VIDEO] By Farah Dosani – More than two-thirds of smokers want to quit, but only a fraction actually does, according a recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Using medicine or counseling can almost double to triple one’s chances of succeeding, the report says. However, most who tried quitting last year didn’t use either.
November 21, 2011
By Sammy Mack – Almost two-thirds of LGBT seniors have been victimized three or more times, according to a government-sponsored report. The results are in from a groundbreaking national health survey of more than 2,500 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender seniors, and it highlights the particular disparities and needs of aging LGBT communities.
November 15, 2011
By Farah Dosani – About one in 10 kids in America lives with a severe mental illness. The condition can impair their lives at home, at school and with their peers. But finding care can be tough – especially in Florida. The state ranks 49th in per capita spending on mental health services.
By Sammy Mack – Thanksgiving is almost here. And with the gluttonous holiday comes the very serious threat of danger – the danger of third degree burns or a house going up in flames. If you’re thinking of taking the deep-fried turkey plunge – a plunge into a propane-fueled vat of boiling oil – there are a few safety tips you might find useful.
November 14, 2011
By Sammy Mack – Last Saturday, three robots arrived in Baghdad with a mission: to connect patients and healthcare workers in Iraq with trauma specialists in Miami. In a scene reminiscent of Star Trek, the three robots are at the cutting edge of telemedicine – a collaboration among Jackson Memorial Hospital and University of Miami doctors, the U.S. Army, the State Department and a health care contractor in Iraq.
November 9, 2011
By Farah Dosani – The nation’s “war on drugs” is a different beast today than it was in the past. A large part of the change has to do with the rise of prescription drug abuse over other drugs, says former U.S. special agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Bob Stutman. In fact, prescription drugs may overtake car crashes as the leading cause of fatal injury in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Florida, prescription drugs account for three-quarters of all drug overdose deaths.