It is not enough to treat a child's cancer or heart condition. Hospitals also need to look after the well-being of the child's family, said the new executive director of the Children's Hospital of Southwest Florida.

That means providing services close to home, said Dr. John Iacuone, who started his new post in the Lee Memorial Healthcare System on June 27.

"I guess I take a holistic approach to treatment. Just taking care of a specific disease is not the whole issue," he said. "You have to take care of the kid and the brothers and sisters and make sure the mother and father are being productive."

Iacuone plans to bring his all-encompassing approach to Southwest Florida. His goal: to give high-level care close to home.

That means providing more specialized care and creating partnerships with other children's hospitals, he said. There also needs to be solid philanthropic support and an emphasis on community involvement, especially when it comes to the growing ethnic diversity.

"I want good programs at grassroots levels," he said.

And that's exactly what the Children's Hospital of Southwest Florida needs, said Sharon MacDonald, vice president of the Lee Memorial Healthcare System Foundation.

"He comes to us with a very strong pediatrician background as a hematology oncologist, but he's been involved in developing children's programming, he's been an advocate for children and he's helped raise dollars for children's services," MacDonald said.

Photo by MICHEL FORTIER

Daily News

John Iacuone is the new executive director for The Children's Hospital of Southwest Florida. Iacuone was the chief medical officer at Covenant Children's Hospital in Lubbock, Texas, before arriving in Florida.

Iacuone, 57, has spent his entire medical career trying to make life easier for sick kids.

After graduating from the Indiana University School of Medicine in 1973, he did his residency and fellowship program training in oncology at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital.

Then he went to Lubbock, Texas. For the next 29 years he worked in children's oncology, most recently as the chief medical officer of Covenant Children's Hospital.

"When I was first there, kids — they went 12 hours (for care). That is not good for a family," he said. "You can't just quit your job and move to Houston because your child has cancer or a heart problem."

Now, the majority of children do not have to leave Lubbock or the surrounding rural areas for treatment, he said.

Iacuone also served as the principal investigator of the Children's Oncology Group, a national nonprofit organization with the goal of preventing and curing cancer in children.

As he worked with cancer-stricken children, Iacuone said he started to consider the big picture. That's when he enrolled in a master's of business administration program at Texas Tech University. He will complete his degree in July 2008, but he didn't want to wait that long to start revamping children's health care from the top.

When he attended a medical conference and heard about the opening at the Children's Hospital of Southwest Florida, he saw his golden opportunity.

"I felt sort of a calling to switch gears and try my hand at helping children from a different angle. Rather than just direct patient care, I wanted to help them have access to programs from the state and federal government for children, so they don't fall through the cracks," he said.

Iacuone, who is an only child, is not sure why he was drawn to pediatric care as a doctor.

"I just like kids, probably because I act like a kid," he said. "They just always break my heart, bring tears to my eyes and make me happy when something good happens."

Now, if his three sons would just give him some grandchildren, he said, chuckling.

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