MIAMI — On Tuesday the Miami-Dade County Board of County Commissioners Meeting passed Resolution 14A2, declaring surplus county-owned land and approving a lease for Florida Sickle Inc. (d/b/a/ Foundation for Sickle Cell Disease Research). The Resolution is sponsored by Commissioner Audrey M. Edmonson and co-sponsored by Commissioners Daniella Levine Cava and Barbara J. Jordan. FSCDR is to build a hospital for sickle cell disease, focused on medical care and clinical research.
The Foundation for Sickle Cell Disease Research was founded by Dr. Lanetta Bronté in December 2012 after working closely with the sickle cell disease community and noticing the extreme lack of care for a disease that affects three million people nationwide. In February 2015, FSCDR opened the nation’s first standalone outpatient center solely dedicated to sickle cell disease care and services. This is historically locally significant, as the South Florida community has one of the nation’s highest numbers of individuals affected by sickle cell.
The sickle cell hospital is to expand on the services offered at FSCDR’s flagship center in Hollywood, Fla. This includes wraparound services to improve an individual with sickle cell disease’s overall quality of life. At the flagship center, patients are currently provided with: treatment by a hematologist-oncologist, care by a sickle cell-trained RN, port access for blood drawing and flushing, a program to reduce visits to the emergency room, a program to reduce inpatient hospitalization, patient-tailored pain management, disability evaluation, school IEP, social resource needs assessment, neurocognitive evaluation with a neuropsychologist, preventative health services, flu vaccinations, care coordination, access to their electronic health record, opportunities to enroll into clinical trials and a MedicAlert Foundation ID.
