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Health Care

A new kind of cola war

Happiness doesn't come in a red can. Obesity does.

That's the tag line from a commercial that will begin airing soon in the Baltimore area, and it's a not-so-subtle attack on Coca-Cola mounted by a group of local health advocates including Howard County's Horizon Foundation, the Maryland State Medical Society (MedChi), the American Heart Association and People Acting Together in Howard (PATH).

Critics demand a better health and wellness policy for Howard

As a Columbia pediatrician, Henri Merrick regularly sees young patients who are significantly overweight. It's a trend she started noticing several years ago, and the weights of school-aged children began to cause her great concern.

So three years ago, she started a diet program at her practice. If a child had a body mass index in the 84th percentile, she put them on a diet: no sugar, lots of water and healthier food

Group works with county on health care initiative

A group of volunteers plan to spend their Saturdays this summer in Howard County neighborhoods, knocking on doors and making a pitch.

The volunteers, members of People Acting Together in Howard, are not selling anything but, rather, hope to find some of the 20,000 people in the county without health insurance and tell them they might qualify for Healthy Howard, a county-subsidized health program.

PATH, a coalition of more than a dozen local congregations, chooses causes like health care to bring to the attention of citizens and politicians.