The odds of having a premature baby are high in Florida, compared with other states. The state ranks 41st, and receives a grade of F, in a "report card" issued Wednesday by the March of Dimes. The group, using figures from 2005, gives ...more

November 13, 2008

. So Sarah Palin, in addition to being the mother of five, is also the soon-to-be grandmother of one. Welcome to 21st century America. ...more

September 4, 2008

As Hillsborough County struggles to understand why black babies here and elsewhere in Florida die more frequently than white ones, one local agency is bucking the disturbing trend. ...more

July 5, 2008

An initiative looking at why black babies are dying in Hillsborough County may run out of funding but not steam, organizers say. ...more

May 21, 2008

With all the worries that go along with pregnancy, having a child with Down syndrome wasn't on Alexandra Torok's radar. ...more

February 18, 2008

The youngest Miller boy would watch the oldest through the window behind the front desk at strength coach Rich Lansky's training facility in Sarasota. Occasionally, the little guy - who, even at age 11, wasn't so little - would yell through the window while his big brother lifted. ...more

December 28, 2007

Remember biology class where you learned that children inherit one copy of a gene from mom and a second from dad? There's a twist: Some of those genes arrive switched off, so there is no backup if the other copy goes bad, making you more vulnerable to disorders from obesity to cancer. ...more

December 14, 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

Women are just as likely to get an abortion in countries where it is outlawed as they are in countries where it is legal, according to research published Friday. ...more

October 12, 2007