My editing roles were expanded in 2023 to oversee our health care reporters and entire health care coverage. This includes producing our annual Medicare enrollment guide, coverage of local hospitals, universities, research trends, health policy and more.
It’s great to expand on my knowledge as a former health care reporter and help shape our future coverage.
By Justine Griffin for the Tampa Bay Times
I grew up inside St. Angelo’s Pizza in New Port Richey. It’s the business my dad started when he was in his 20s and looking for a change from the bitter winters of Buffalo, N.Y.
Fast-forward 40 years, and the restaurant with the “Original Chicken Wings” sign out front on the corner of Madison Avenue and State Road 54 is still the first place I drive to when I want to see my dad.
His business has weathered many hurricanes — often feeding neighbors for days in the aftermath when nobody else had power or A.C. He survived the 2008 recession, and slow changes to the West Pasco neighborhood as growth shifted to the eastern end of the county, like Trinity and Wesley Chapel.
But as we read the headlines every day, announcing new limitations and shutdowns on businesses related to the coronavirus pandemic, I fear for him and his livelihood.
My dad, Brian Griffin, is old school. Everything about his business is still written down on takeout slips and scratched into notebooks. He got his first iPhone just last year, and he still doesn’t know how to send a text. Dad has mastered how to capture and upload a photo, though. He regularly updates the St. Angelo’s Pizza Facebook page with images of handwritten messages he’s scribbled on a whiteboard. I think his social media strategy is quite charming.
Small businesses across Tampa Bay are caught up in the unknown — of what tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or the next six months will bring. Service workers are being laid off in all counties, at a time when they’re being told to stay home instead of hitting the streets to find a new source of income.
It’s hard for me to watch my dad worry. He delayed his retirement to pay for my wedding. He’s the hardest-working man I know, and he instilled those values in me.
Dad would hand-deliver me homemade lunch when I was in elementary school. He’d never forget a side of black olives — my favorite snack. Once I got to high school, I wasn’t only his daughter but also his employee. I graduated from answering phones and jotting down delivery orders to being a waitress. I loathed it, and once begged my dad to let me quit so I could get a job next door at Publix.
He wouldn’t let me. His defense was: “You’re going to do this job now so you’ll go to college and won’t have to do it anymore.” Those waitressing skills kept cash in my pocket throughout my college years.
On Friday, the day Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered restaurants statewide to offer takeout and delivery only, I made the familiar drive from my home in St. Petersburg to see my dad. I found him standing next to the old pizza oven. He had flour in his long hair and his beard, and there were three pies about to go in for baking.
The dining room was dark. The chairs were stacked upside down on the tables. But the phones were buzzing. I took a pizza and delivered it nearby.
People lined up at the takeout counter to place orders. Many addressed my dad by a nickname reserved only for close friends: Griff. As he cashed out one man in his 20s, my dad told him to say hello to his parents for him. He joked with a mom who’d preferred to stand in the lobby near the hot kitchen than sit in her minivan with her husband and kids.
“They’ll be home for who knows how much longer. I could use a break,” she joked.
My dad thanked everyone who came in that day for their business, like he always does. But on that Friday, amid the growing chaos of the coronavirus pandemic, I know their support meant even more.
/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-tbt.s3.amazonaws.com/public/ACCZPQCNFZBLFCMPNDIQ6BVQQA.JPG)
TAMPA — For years, Dr. Alan List and Dr. Sheng Wei worked closely at Moffitt Cancer Center to find cures and build bridges. Their accomplishments included a new therapy to treat a class of cancers affecting the bone marrow and blood, and a 12-year partnership with a top cancer hospital in Wei’s native China.
“As a team, we just click,” List, the Moffitt CEO, told an in-house publication in 2018. “Dr. Wei and I complement each other in ways that are hard to put into words.”
Now, according to a report obtained Saturday by the Tampa Bay Times, their collaboration — and their strong links to China — are at the center of a flap that recently cost them their jobs, put Moffitt’s reputation at risk and ignited an investigation by the Florida Legislature.
Justine Griffin chronicled Moffitt Cancer Center’s China interference investigation for months for the Tampa Bay Times. Read more of her work here:
Moffitt Cancer Center shakeup: CEO and others resign over China ties
Florida House speaker calls for investigation into China-Moffitt ties
Moffitt turmoil began with national concern over China, stolen research
University of Florida also a target in foreign research scandal
Top Moffitt Cancer Center doctors failed to disclose payments from China, report says
Moffitt’s push for state money is clouded by China investigation
Moffitt returns $1 million to state. Money was linked to scientist with China ties.
UCF takes hot seat as House panel widens investigation into China ties
FBI official addresses China influence investigations at Moffitt Cancer Center, UF
As coronavirus spread, Moffitt Cancer Center’s China scandal faded
By Justine Griffin for the Tampa Bay Times
Ileana Brenes had been feeling dizzy at the St. Petersburg nursing home where she worked. She was pale and tired all the time.
“My doctor called me with my blood results and told me to go to the hospital right away,” said Brenes, 54, a nursing assistant. She went to Bayfront Health St. Petersburg, where doctors gave her a blood transfusion and prescribed medication to raise her iron levels.
At the time, in 2016, Brenes didn’t have insurance. So she met with an administrator at the hospital and filled out paperwork to get help with the cost. She said she knew Bayfront Health was a “safety net” hospital in the region, meaning doctors there would still treat her regardless of her ability to pay.
What she didn’t expect was the lawsuit Bayfront later filed against her for nearly $3,000, including court fees. “I think there was a miscommunication,” she said, “because I did everything they told me to, but still had to go to court.”
Brenes is one of hundreds of patients who have been sued by Bayfront Health St. Petersburg in recent years as the hospital evolved from a nonprofit institution to a for-profit arm of a national chain. The number of patients sued individually in Pinellas County civil and small claims court has risen from about 500 in 2015 to more than 730 so far this year, putting the hospital on pace to double that number by the end of 2019, a Tampa Bay Times analysis shows.
The increase represents a stark change from past practice. In 2012, when Bayfront was still a non-profit, the hospital filed hundreds of small claims cases against patients’ insurance companies, not the patients themselves. That continued in 2013 and 2014 as the hospital quickly changed hands to one corporate chain, then another.
Related coverage to Bayfront Health:
By Justine Griffin for the Tampa Bay Times
If it seems like you’re seeing more reports about flesh-eating bacteria, you actually are. The number of cases is up, though only slightly. And scientists have begun pointing to an increasingly familiar cause: climate change.
The trend will likely continue because of steadily warming temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, which provide a “breeding ground” for the bacteria, said Dr. Sally Alrabaa, an an infectious disease specialist with USF Health and Tampa General Hospital.
“It’s by no means an epidemic but we are seeing more cases this year,” she said. “As the water is getting warmer by a few degrees the bacteria is flourishing for longer periods.”
Necrotizing fasciitis, the infection’s formal name, isn’t caused by the same bacteria found in the blue-green algae or red tide blooms that Florida has seen recently. “But the two are closely related,” Alrabaa said. “The bacteria that affects us has had a lot of food to ‘eat’ thanks to red tide, which has killed fish and marine animals. That’s a lot of organic material for it to feast on.”
Explaining it doesn’t make the situation any less concerning. Several recent reports from Tampa Bay and other parts of Florida have rattled a population that regularly comes into contact with the water. Among the cases: A 77-year-old Ellenton woman who scraped her leg in the waters off Anna Maria Island, got the infection and died; an Ohio man who spent 11 days in the hospital and nearly lost a foot after being infected near Weedon Island; another man who hooked his hand and caught the infection while fishing in the gulf off the Pinellas County coast around Easter.