Mitchell Heights residents who have unanswered questions about pollution in their neighborhood will get a chance to grill local and state officials next week at an open house hosted by the Hernando County Health Department. ...more

February 17, 2008

This month, health-conscious Floridians are being encouraged to take advantage of the largest gymnasiums at their disposal - state parks and greenways. ...more

February 13, 2008

LAKE PLACID — Although the Tooth Fairy hasn't yet visited 6-year-old Ramon Castellano of Lake Placid, he was one of the first patients at the new Children's Dental Care of Highlands. The new 1,200-square-foot dental clinic where Ramon received care is located at the Lake Placid Health Department building, at 106 Main Ave. Any of the county's 15,000 children who are uninsured and Medicaid-eligible pay based on a sliding scale, which starts at no charge, said Dr. Paula Thaqi, director of the Highlands County Health Department. ...more

February 9, 2008

SEBRING — About 400 middle and high school students met regularly to plan activities on spreading the word about the dangers of tobacco and smoking. That was five years ago before a funding cut in 2003 severely curtailed, or at some schools ended the Students Working Against Tobacco (S.W.A.T.) program. With a federal grant to fund it, the Highlands County Health Department proposes to reinstitute the program in the county's high schools. Active S.W.A.T. membership in the county has dropped 70.8 percent since the year 2000, according Donna Noel Stayton, Health Department tobacco prevention specialist. About 28.1 percent of the high school students in Highlands County reported using tobacco within the last 30 days of taking the 2006 Florida Youth Tobacco Survey . ...more

January 22, 2008

Members of the James P. Gills Family YMCA were notified recently that someone who used the building's Youth Activity Center had contracted the potentially deadly MRSA, an antibiotic-resistant staph infection. ...more

December 7, 2007

Veterans who go to James A. Haley VA Medical Center for mental health care are unknowingly treated by psychologists who are inexperienced and not fully licensed, according to a complaint filed last week with a state board. ...more

December 5, 2007

University of South Florida health leaders today are mass vaccinating students against bacterial meningitis as the school prepares to enact the most stringent vaccination policy of any Florida public university. ...more

November 28, 2007

The Florida Department of Health and Safe Kids Florida have come up with a few ideas to keep everyone safe this Halloween. Here are some tips for parents and children: ...more

October 31, 2007

Bennett Napier's column, 'Some Dental Parts May Pose Danger' (Other Views, Oct. 25) was both inaccurate and misleading. The Florida Dental Association's (FDA) 7,000 members interact with dental labs on a daily basis as they are a fundamental part of dentistry. Increased regulation of these labs would not enhance the security of Florida consumers, but rather increase dental costs by more than $1 million. ...more

October 29, 2007

SEBRING — In Highlands County, six infants died in 2004, seven in 2005, and 11 in 2006. Those don't seem like high numbers, considering that 1,004 babies are born here every year. But take a second look: the number of infant deaths has almost doubled in two years, and Mary Jo Plews is troubled. Plews, executive director of Healthy Start Coalition of Hardee, Highlands and Polk counties, said a committee is still looking at individual cases in Highlands County to determine why the infant mortality rate went up so drastically. One reason, she realized, is that Highlands is a small county, so the statistics themselves are small. For instance, Lafayette County had only three infant deaths from 2004-06, but since there were only 295 live births in the same three years, the mortality rate was 11.7 percent, one of the highest in the state. ...more

October 26, 2007