The Laker-Wesley Chapel/New Tampa-August 24, 2016

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The LAKER WESLEY CHAPEL/NEW TAMPA EDITION

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Wesley Chapel Boulevard to be six lanes By Kathy Steele ksteele@lakerlutznews.com

Pasco County now is on a path to widen County Road 54 — also known as Wesley Chapel Boulevard — to a six-lane divided road. The move comes nearly 15 years after the county proposed widening the road from two lanes to four lanes. The project also will include a multi-use trail on one side and a sidewalk on the other side. No construction start date is announced, but the road’s design is about 90 percent complete. The Pasco County Commission approved a road re-evaluation study on Aug. 9, which is the next step in what has been a drawn out process. A 2003 study that looked at future traffic See CR54, page 19A

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Looking for tools to help patients help themselves By B.C. Manion bcmanion@lakerlutznews.com

When it comes to treating patients with behavioral health issues, including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Dr. Laura Bajor is always on the lookout for new tools that could help. She sees the potential of emerging technology. But Bajor, who is medical director for the CORE program at North Tampa Behavioral Health, 29910 State Road 56 in Wesley Chapel, isn’t into technology for technology’s sake. Organizations that engage in that approach, she said,“tend to create a ‘flavor of the month’ atmosphere.’” Ultimately, that’s counterproductive, Bajor said, because “that actually ends up alienating folks from trying new things, because they’ve lost faith in the actual benefit of new technology.” Instead, Bajor believes that “technology and research are most useful when they improve a patient’s investment in their own health, and their quality of life.” She’s constantly on the lookout for new tools, or collaborations, to help her find the best ways to help the patients she’s treating. “In my opinion, one of the absolute worst conversations to have with a patient is to have to sit across a desk from them and say ‘We’ve run out of treatment options for you, and we’re not working on anything new. Good luck.’ “The real aim of health care is not that they remain our patients, it’s that they function well on their own without us. So, we can move them toward that,” Bajor said. Along those lines,“we’re using technology to assess sleep, activity level, change in heart rate throughout the course of the day, and a few other parameters,” she said. This permits a more focused approach to prescribing medication and planning treatment, she said. The idea is to be able to show patients evidence regarding their progress or lack of it, which helps save time and reduces frustration, she said. Technology also is used to help patients learn how to control their own stress and

B.C. MANION/STAFF PHOTOS

Dr. Laura Bajor, medical director of the CORE program at North Tampa Behavioral Health, is always looking for new tools to help her patients help themselves.

anxiety levels, which helps them regain a sense of control and self-confidence, she said. Bajor said she began using emerging technology about four years ago, with a series of small innovation grants in a clinic at the VA in Boston. She was able to pilot the use of different kinds of fitness, sleep, and stress trackers with her staff and patients.That eventually spread into a partnership with the Basis division of Intel, who worked to equip patients from about 15 different clinics and programs with their gear. She believes part of the reason she was recruited to become the medical director of the CORE program at North Tampa Behavioral was because of those experiences and skills. Sleep plays a significant role in a patient’s health, Bajor said. “The first paper I ever published was about tracking sleep first rather than hitting

people with very high-caliber meds,” Bajor said. When someone comes into the clinic and sleep is part of their problem, they are put on a tracking system for a couple of days before any medication is prescribed, she said. “Is the problem that they’re not going to bed until 3 in the morning? Is the problem that they can’t fall asleep? Or, is it that they’re waking up 10 times? “We would actually use different treatment approaches, depending on which or all of those problems they have,” she said. “A person, once they’ve been sleeping, you can probably use much less medicine,” she said. That helps to avoid prescribing medication that can affect their functioning during the day, and reduces potential for side effects. “All of these things have side effects,” she added. While in Boston, Bajor said she worked with top-notch researchers and clinicians from the Harvard and Boston University systems, she said. “I worked mainly in Ann Rasmusson’s lab at the National Center for PTSD, where there is a major focus on using exercise, cognitive therapy, and other novel approaches to calm down the neuroendocrine system, get folks’ frontal lobes back on line, and in doing all that, help PTSD patients get back in control of their anxiety,” she said. “Ann and her crew have continued to be generous in providing advice about how to translate these ideas into our CORE program,” she said, where exercise, yoga, diet and other approaches are being used to treat veterans. “There’s an emerging parameter called heart rate variability,” Bajor said.“It’s kind of the newest thing in physiologic tracking. It’s the rate at which a heart rate changes. “We’re watching that with guys who are doing PTSD therapy,” she said. “We can tell: Should we back off a little, or should we try harder? “There’s actually NFL coaches and Olympic coaches that are using the same HRV (heart rate variability).They’ll say,‘Well this guy should take a day off from See TOOLS, page 19A

Land O’ Lakes High will stay open during renovations By B.C. Manion bcmanion@lakerlutznews.com

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Land O’ Lakes High School will remain open during a massive renovation project that is scheduled to begin next June. Superintendent Kurt Browning had planned to shift the Land O’ Lakes High students to a new high school, known as “GGG”, being built on Old Pasco Road. But, he changed his mind after openingday enrollment figures at Wiregrass Ranch High School revealed that 2,478 students showed up to a school built for 1,633 students. John Long Middle School’s opening enrollment was 1,810 students, at a school built for 1,327. Both school’s opening day enrollments exceeded district projections for the entire year. Other schools in Land O’ Lakes and Wesley Chapel also exceeded projections, Browning said, in an Aug. 16 letter sent to parents of Land O’ Lakes High and Pine View Middle students. The district had been considering three options relating to the Land O’ Lakes makeover. One option was for students to stay at Land O’ Lakes High, the second was to put Sunlake High School on double sessions and the third was to send the students to “GGG.” Browning said he now believes “that the least disruptive solution is to keep students at Land O’ Lakes High School during the ren-

B.C. MANION/STAFF PHOTOS

Land O’ Lakes High School will stay open during a massive renovation project that is set to begin next June. By keeping students on campus, the project will take two years to complete rather than one.

ovations.” That being said, Browning noted “it still will not be ideal.” Keeping Land O’ Lakes High open during renovations will delay the project’s completion by a year and will reduce the scope of work to account for the added cost of extending the length of the project by a year, Browning wrote. “The school will be a construction zone,

and we will have to place dozens of portable classrooms on and around the campus. We won’t have practice fields and will reduce the number of parking spaces. There will be utility disruptions and construction dust,” Browning added. There are some bright spots, though, the superintendent noted. See SCHOOL, page 19A


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