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Rosalie Aguilar-Santos

Rosalie Aguilar Santos, MS, is Salud America!'s national project coordinator. She is passionate about nutrition, physical activity, and opportunities to engage communities in advocacy actions to promote Latino childhood health.

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Articles by Rosalie Aguilar-Santos

Plans For Collier County’s First ‘Ciclovia’ Are In Motion



If all goes as planned, residents in Collier County, FL may soon experience their first ever Ciclovia/ open streets event. The date for the first event is scheduled for February 7, 2015, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. However, organizers already have plans for additional events to be held during the first Saturday of March, April, September, October and November, according to a Naples Daily news story. At the moment, organizers are waiting to get the permits they need to temporarily close down streets like Washington Avenue, Glades and Escambia, where the event would take place. While the idea for hosting a ciclovia originally came from staff at the University of Florida's family nutrition program, planning for the event has really been a community effort. Groups like the Collier ...

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Buncombe Co. Brings Healthy Programs to A Predominantly Latino Neighborhood



In 2012, health officials from Buncombe County, North Carolina partnered with a local hospitals and community organizations, to conduct a community-wide health assessment. What they learned was that close to  30% of Buncombe adults were obese; 33% were overweight; 37% of adults had high blood pressure; and 7.9% of the community suffered from diabetes. After learning about the dire health challenges that residents faced,  the county health department quickly took action by coming up with a plan to improve the health of the community.   As part of the plan the health department formed local partnerships and came up with six health priorities which included goals to address obesity and improve child health. These key partnerships and collaborations, led to the formation a number of ...

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Funding Alert: The ‘BUILD Health Challenge’ Offers Planning and Implementation Grants For Improving Health



All communities deserve the right to be healthy! That's why partners from the Advisory Board Company, the de Beaumont Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have teamed up to launch the BUILD Health Challenge. The BUILD Health Challenge is a national award program aimed at providing support to communities  who are interested in collaborating with other groups to improve the health of high risk communities. Through the BUILD Health Challenge up to 14 communities will be awarded grants of $75,000-$250,000 for the planning and implementation of their projects. To be eligible to apply, applicants must: Have the support of a three-way partnership between a hospital or health system, the local health department, and at least one not-for-profit ...

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Local Rotarians Team Up With Volunteers To Build A Community Playground & Basketball Court



When it comes to building healthier communities anyone can make a difference! The Rotary Club of San Antonio recently worked to transform two plots of land into active spaces for kids at St. PJ's Children's Home and Stewart elementary. This is the 13th Kingdom for Kids build sponsored by this group.  To  make the transformation possible, the Rotary Club teamed up with the volunteers from AmeriCorps program, the City Year San Antonio (CYSA) and local businessman Rick Cavender who has helped fund the Kingdom for Kids project for 13 years. The group met on the weekend of Friday, November 14-15 to implement the healthy changes. With just a $8,500 budget for the project, they installed new playground equipment, landscaping, gardens, and a basketball court at Stewart elementary ...

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National Initiative Works to Promote Access to Nature For Children



The Children and Nature Network (C&NN) has recently announced a new partnership with the National League of Cities (NLC) which will lead to the expansion of programs and policies aimed at connecting underserved children and youth to parks and greenspace. The three year project called the Cities Promoting Access to Nature Initiative is being made possible through a grant from the JPB Foundation. According to a press release from the C&NN, representatives from the NLC, the YMCA, and the U.S. Department of the Interior signed a Memorandum of Understanding in April 2014, where they pledged to coordinate efforts to reduce the disconnect between children and the outdoors. Building upon this partnership the C&NN will work with the three groups to help advance the latest ...

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Miami-Dade County’s ‘Fit to Play’ Program Brings After-School Fitness To Kids



Between August 2014 through June 2015, the Miami-Dade County Parks and Recreation Department will be offering the Fit to Play program, Monday-Friday, during after school hours (2-6 p.m), at 41 Miami-Dade parks throughout the city. The cost of attending the program is $25- $35 per week, however financial assistance and even full scholarships are available to families that qualify. In addition to learning about nutrition and getting homework help from trained recreation professionals, each Fit to Play location provides physical activity to students in the form of the evidence-based Sports, Play and Active Recreation for Kids (SPARK) curriculum. Kids are also rewarded with incentives which motivates them to keep exercising.  With permission from parents, participants are invited to ...

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New Software Developed By ‘Playorities’ Helps Pediatricians Link Kids to After-School Fitness Programs



What do park systems, pediatricians, health insurance and a new mobile app, all have in common? A need to get connected! The team over at Playorities has been working to develop software that would link all of the above in efforts to get more kids outdoors and playing. “We are engaging pediatricians, the Parks and Rec community, and parents and kids to help them stay focused on getting active at least 45 minutes a day," Playorities co-founder Allison Diego said in a blog post from The Post. Diego, a former assistant director with the Miami-Dade County Parks and Recreation Department, strongly believes that part of the solution to ending childhood obesity involves the use of after-school programs which reward kids for being active. She also believes in the power of park ...

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Bike Infrastructure Requires More Than Just Bike Lanes



Better bike infrastructure may be key for helping communities become more active. However, according to a recent blog post from People For Bikes, getting people to use bike lanes requires more than just building them. "It's relationships first, understanding the culture and motivations first, and then infrastructure can be a solution," said Anthony Taylor, of the Major Taylor Cycling Club of Minnesota, in a People For Bikes blog post. The addition of new bike infrastructure needs to be planned in accordance with activities such as bike repair workshops and opportunities to have access to bikes. Otherwise it may be much more challenging for communities to integrate biking into their everyday activities. "Infrastructure can't be the only thing we think about as we work for ...

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Researchers Find New Evidence of How Adding Bike Infrastructure May Boost Cycling to Work



A team of researchers from the University of North Carolina presented compelling information at the 2014 Obesity Society Annual meeting that shows the development of Greenways in Minnesota may have helped increase rates of people who bike to work. The study, which examines the levels of bike commutes over a 10 year period, found that ridership increased 89% among those who lived within three miles of the Greenways and by 33% for those who lived within six miles. "Our goal was to evaluate how the development of the Minneapolis Greenway affected the commute of residents over a ten-year period. We found that bicycle commuting increased most significantly in communities along the Greenway," said Penny Gordon-Larsen, PhD, TOS Vice President and Professor of Nutrition at the ...

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