December 27, 2011
By Dalia Colón – Health care isn’t the sexiest topic. It’s easy to get bogged down in data, forgetting that health issues affect real people. It’s their stories–not statistics and jargon–that bring health topics to life and make them relevant. So as 2011 draws to a close, we thought we’d check in with some of the Floridians who kept you talking throughout the year.
December 1, 2011
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 22, 2011
[AUDIO] By Dalia Colón – If caregiving had a soundtrack, what genre would it be? Folk? Oldies? Gospel? How ’bout hip-hop with a reggae twist? That’s the feel of Perfect Harmony, a new song that celebrates caregivers. Here’s a taste:
October 7, 2011
By Farah Dosani – Florida is becoming a friendlier state for patients facing serious illness. The Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) graded each state on access to palliative care in its hospitals. According to the new report, almost two-thirds of Florida hospitals with 50 or more beds have a program in place – an increase from less than half in 2008. The same trend goes for hospitals nationwide.
October 5, 2011
By Dalia Colón – Manuel Valle was executed a week ago, but controversy surrounding the convicted cop killer’s death lives on. The execution marked Florida’s first use of the barbiturate pentobarbital in a lethal injection. The drug is more commonly used as a sedative, prescribed in doses of about 100 milligrams. But when it comes to the lethal injection, Florida multiplies that dose 50 times.
August 22, 2011
[VIDEO] By Farah Dosani – Each day on the job, Mae Greenberg listens to the thoughts of grief-stricken parents and lovers, cancer patients or caregivers. The mental health counselor facilitates several support groups at the Cancer Support Community Greater Miami.
August 8, 2011
[VIDEO] By Farah Dosani – Many people avoid talking about death and dying – but not Ligia Houben. The Miami-based grief counselor and life transitions coach has built her life around it. She is also a certified thanotologist, which is a person who specializes in death, dying and bereavement.
August 4, 2011
By Dalia Colón – For 2008, the cost of hospice care in Florida is estimated at $1.2 billion, according to Florida Trend magazine. That year, nearly 100,000 Medicare patients with terminal illnesses received hospice care. “Providers of hospice services grew to meet the demand,” the publication reports. What follows is a primer on the state of hospice in Florida. Whether you work in the health field or are caring for a terminally ill loved one, you may want to give it a read.
August 3, 2011
[VIDEO] By Farah Dosani – Gertrude Kaufman lives by herself in a condo in Coconut Creek, Fla. Last year, she noticed one breast was larger than the other. Her doctor thought it was cancer and wanted to take a biopsy. She refused and enrolled in home hospice. Although she has no family, the 96-year-old hardly feels like she’s dealing with it alone.
July 11, 2011
By Dalia Colón – First Lady Betty Ford survived breast cancer, championed the HIV/AIDS community and advocated for abortion rights. But Ford, who died Friday at age 93, will likely be best remembered for her eponymous alcohol and drug addiction treatment center. She opened the Betty Ford Center in 1982 in Rancho Mirage, Calif., after her own public battle with addiction.
June 23, 2011
By Dalia Colón – The government’s new cigarette warning labels may be controversial, but they’re also right on time, according to new figures from the American Cancer Society. Lung cancer continues to kill more Americans than any other cancer, with about 160,000 Americans expected to die from the disease this year. In total, ACS estimates 1.6 million new cancers will be diagnosed this year, with about 572,000 cancer deaths.
June 22, 2011
By Dalia Colón – Juan Ponce de León may have gone searching for the Fountain of Youth in present-day St. Augustine, but he would’ve been better off looking in Collier County. That’s because women in the southwest Florida county live longer than anywhere else in the U.S. – an average of 86 years – according to a new study from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
June 8, 2011
[VIDEO] By Farah Dosani – Two months ago, Bonnie Dominguez was at her wits end as a caregiver to her mother Marie Bem, who suffers from Alzheimer’s. Bem used to stay home by herself for only a couple of hours a day – between the time Dominguez went to work and the time her daughter comes home from school. But then in February she lost consciousness twice. “That really scared me…. What am I going to do? I have to work. My daughter has to go to school. I don’t want to leave her alone,” she said.
June 3, 2011
By Farah Dosani – Louis Frasca, 86, looks outside the window from his family room in Forest Park, a North Fort Myers mobile home community. “A lady across the street was in hospice,” he points out. “That poor thing, she passed away. The fellow up the street – the same way.” So when Frasca was referred to hospice care in 2006 after open-heart surgery, he thought that was it.
June 2, 2011
By Sammy Mack – In Thursday’s rounds, ALFs might get tighter oversight; Elton John sends a letter to Rick Scott; A map of HIV in the Southeast; a breast milk donation program launches in Jacksonville; new hope for a melanoma vaccine; and German E. coli is a new strain.
May 26, 2011
[VIDEO] By Farah Dosani – If you’re in the hospice industry, you may not be the most popular person in the room. “I can empty a table in five minutes – I can promise you – just telling stories of what I’ve seen on any given day,” said Holly Delia, a hospice nurse in Broward County. She thinks it’s their loss.
May 13, 2011
[VIDEO] By Farah Dosani – Several stories of assisted-living facility neglect in Florida have surfaced in recent weeks. The Miami Herald investigated incidences in which professional caretakers at these homes neglected their residents – some of which may have ultimately led to their death. But despite these unfortunate situations, there are still millions of family and professional caregivers across the country who are doing justice to that title. Gary Barg, founder and Editor-in-Chief of Caregiver Media Group based in Fort Lauderdale, explains why the role of care-giving matters so much.
April 26, 2011
By Farah Dosani – People come to a funeral hoping to take away something. Closure, remembrance, a reminder of our mortality… The last funeral I attended was for my grandfather. It was August 11, 2008. He had died early that morning in the hospital and we buried him late that afternoon. Three details stick in my mind: how I felt, what was said and who attended.
March 11, 2011
[BLOG] By Farah Dosani – Palliative care not only can be a service to terminally ill patients, but also to the dollar-stretched health care system. Medicaid patients who received palliative care had $6,900 less in hospital bills on average than those who received typical care, according to a new study published this month in Health Affairs.
February 24, 2011
[BLOG] By Farah Dosani – For doctors, bringing up ‘palliative care’ to their patients requires them to walk a fine line. Patients with terminal illnesses are already battling fear and and anxiety, so broaching the subject of palliative care can often times exacerbate those feelings. “With palliative care, it’s very common for people to take the attitude: ‘Oh, here comes the grim reaper. He wants me to go home and die,’” said Dr. Daniel De La Torre, a physician at Lee Memorial Health System.