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WellFlorida News Release

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (August 22, 2013)— WellFlorida has been selected by the University of South Florida (USF) as the consortium partner for 15 North Central Florida counties after USF recently received one of several “Navigator” grants for the state of Florida by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

WellFlorida will work in collaboration with USF as one of 10 statewide partners to hire local Navigators to help uninsured Floridians enroll for health coverage when the Health Insurance Marketplace opens October 1, 2013. Partners […]

University of South Florida News Release

The Department of Health and Human Services navigator award is the largest in Florida, and second largest nationwide.

The University of South Florida has been awarded a one-year, $4.2-million federal grant to help eligible uninsured Floridians who want in-person assistance with shopping for and enrolling in plans through the Health Insurance Marketplace, beginning this fall.

The Florida Covering Kids & Families program (FL-CKF) at the Lawton and Rhea Chiles Center, received second largest award out of $67 million in “Navigator” grant awards […]

Wall Street Journal, June 18, 2013

CommunityHealth IT to bring up to 2.2 million patients’ records onto the Florida HIE via RelayHealth
TALLAHASSEE, Fla.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–June 18, 2013–The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA), the sponsoring agency for the Florida Health Information Exchange (HIE), welcomed the not-for-profit CommunityHealth IT into the Florida HIE. CommunityHealth IT connects community healthcare providers and patients through its MyHealthStory(TM) HIE, which leverages RelayHealth to expand access and the reliability of data across varied care settings.

Developed by CommunityHealth IT and powered by […]

Citrus County Chronicle
By Gerry Mulligan, Publisher

An interesting report was produced a few weeks back that tells a lot of things about Citrus County, but it drifted under the radar screen of almost everyone.

A “Needs Assessment” survey was completed by the Citrus County Hospital Board working with the Well Florida Council, and it is packed with information about who we are. I love numbers, and here is what the report stated about Citrus County:

+ For instance, the highest unemployment rate in Citrus County can be […]

The Guardian
By Shane Bailey, MBA/HCM, MPharm, Director of Community Initiatives, WellFlorida Council Inc.

Florida ranks third in the nation for the number of people living with HIV. Of the 101,456 persons with HIV, 49 percent are African American. Although these numbers are discouraging, it is important to know that HIV cases in Florida have decreased significantly among all races and ethnicities over the last 10 years, but there is much we can do, individually and as a community, to prevent the disease from spreading.

HIV is spread […]

The Guardian
By Lauren Pollock, North Central Florida Cancer Control Collaborative Coordinator for the WellFlorida Council

Throughout the United States, African-Americans endure far worse health outcomes than other ethnicities for problems such as diabetes and heart disease. In the North Central Florida community, however, it is cancer outcomes for African-Americans that are among our region’s most pressing health issues.

According to a report by WellFlorida Council, a nonprofit health organization in Gainesville, the death rate of cancer in African-American residents in North Central Florida is higher than the […]

WellFlorida News Release
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (April 17, 2013)—A new High Impact Prevention (HIP) project by WellFlorida Council is aiming to decrease the spread of HIV and link HIV-infected individuals to prevention and care services in Alachua, Marion and Putnam counties.

Everyone’s Doing It, It’s Everyone’s Business and ARTAS are components of the HIP project, which is funded by the Department of Health.

Everyone’s Doing It promotes condom use and HIV testing throughout the three counties. Testing is confidential and teens do not need parental consent to be tested […]

Gainesville Sun, March 24, 2013
By Kristine Crane

Michael Perry thought he had food poisoning last summer. He doesn’t remember what he’d eaten, but he remembers cramps so bad that in the middle of the night he went to the emergency room in Keystone Heights.

Perry said he has an “old school” philosophy about his health: “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.”

Perry felt broken that night.

But it wasn’t from anything he’d eaten.

It was something he didn’t know much about: colon cancer. At 56, Perry knew he […]

Gainesville Sun, March 24, 2013
By Kristine Crane

African-Americans in the 11 counties comprising North Central Florida have higher rates of cancer mortality than other African-Americans throughout the rest of the state, according to the North Central Florida Cancer Control Collaborative Report released in January.

“Disparities between the races are well-documented,” said Jeff Feller, CEO of the WellFlorida Council, which produced the report. “We’re woefully worse off in our black population in almost every form of cancer.”

The overall age-adjusted death rate (which removes the confounding influence of […]

Washington Post, March 10, 2013
By Michael A. Fletcher

ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. — This prosperous community is the picture of the good and ever longer life — just what policymakers have in mind when they say that raising the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare is a fair way to rein in the nation’s troublesome debt.

The county’s plentiful and well-tended golf courses teem with youthful-looking retirees. The same is true on the county’s 41 miles of Atlantic Ocean beaches, abundant tennis courts and extensive […]