SEBRING — Of Highlands County's nine baby deaths in 2007, three are a result of mothers sleeping with their babies. It's called co-sleeping, and officials say it's a big problem in Highlands County. Deborah Hadley, program manager of Healthy Families for Highlands County, said family support workers with Healthy Families, who visit mothers in the home, are reporting many teen mothers sleeping with babies in their bed. "We have a huge problem with co-sleeping," Hadley said. "Some of our parents use drugs or alcohol, and it concerns us greatly that that have babies in the bed with them." Hadley said some mothers say co-sleeping is a cultural habit they don't want to change and others say they cannot afford cribs for their babies. ...more

June 2, 2008

SEBRING — The yearly infant mortality rate for Highlands County nearly doubled from 2003 to 2006, according to data from the Florida Department of Health. In 2006, more than half of those deaths came from parents living in Avon Park, and more than half the deaths in the whole county involved blacks. The stated-funded Healthy Start Coalition of Hardee, Highlands and Polk Counties, a pregnancy and infant care program, also noted a trend where more infants were killed by accidental suffocations instead of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). ...more

May 19, 2008

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