From mental health to education and preparing children for adulthood, moms and dads have a lot to think about with how they parent. In fact, 40% of parents with children younger than 18 say they are extremely or very worried that their children might struggle with anxiety or depression at some point, according to the new Parenting in America Today report from the Pew Research Center. Parents worries stem from the rise of a youth mental health crisis and the compounding stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, which deeply impacted Latinos. Let’s explore the full report on parenting and how it impacts Latinos!
The Top Parental Concern
Mental health is the top concern for parents, according to the Pew report. That worry is felt “more acutely” by Latino parents. “42% of ...
About 150,000 Americans are diagnosed with colorectal cancer. For Latinos, colorectal cancer mortality rates remain stagnant due to a number of inequities including lack of access to healthy and nutritious food and less access to health insurance and healthcare. While many do experience symptoms when developing colorectal cancer, some also may not. Therefore, it is important for Latinos to take measures that can decrease the risk for the disease through making healthy choices, and create healthier environments for healthy lives! Let’s use #SaludTues on March 7, 2023, to dive into the importance of National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. WHAT: #SaludTues: National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month
TIME/DATE: 1-2 p.m. EST (Noon-1 p.m. CST), Tuesday, March 7, 2023
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While many US restaurants removed sugary drink options from kid’s menus in recent years, 44% of the top 200 chains still offered soda or other sugary drinks, according to a recent study from the Center For Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). Sugary drinks contribute added sugars in a child’s diet, which can then contribute to obesity. Yet sugary drinks were the most common children’s beverages offered at the top 200 restaurant chains in 2019 and 2021, the report found. “It’s time for all restaurants to drop children’s sugary drinks. To complement industry efforts, states and localities should pass legislation that requires restaurants to make healthier beverages the default kids’ drink offering,” according to CSPI. “Healthier children’s meals, served with ...
Researchers are exploring a genetic variant that could explain the higher rates of Alzheimer’s among Latinos living in Puerto Rico. This work – which is ongoing – could help fill a critical gap in Latino Alzheimer’s research and spark new treatments for dementia, according to researchers at the John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics at the University of Miami. “A genetic target, which drug companies are showing interest in, is twice as likely to be successful therapeutically than nongenetic targets,” Margaret Pericak-Vance, leader of the Hussman Institute, told NBC News. Let’s dive into the research and how it impacts Latinos!
The Need for Genetic Research on Alzheimer’s among Latinos
Latinos are 1.5 times more likely than their peers to have ...
The rise of COVID-19 worsened daily life for Latinos and many others in areas like healthcare, housing, income, and food access. Stress and anxiety are other grim outcomes of the pandemic, especially for youth. Following COVID-19-fueled school shutdowns and social isolation, adolescents experienced more symptoms of anxiety and depression and greater internalizing problems than before the pandemic, according to a new study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). The brains of teens and young adults were also deeply impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. “In addition to replicating prior findings that the COVID-19 pandemic adversely affected adolescents’ mental health, this study showed that the pandemic may have physically aged their brains,” according to ...
When COVID-19 first struck America in 2020, Latinos were deeply affected. Not only did the pandemic create high rates of infection, hospitalization, and death among Latinos, it also worsened historical health inequities, from access to healthcare and vaccinations to food insecurity, housing issues, and misinformation. Today, as new variants continue to arise, an unresolved threat has emerged – Long COVID. Let’s analyze the lingering symptoms of Long COVID-19 and how it impacts Latinos today.
What is Long COVID?
The Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC, and other partners have worked to define “long COVID” or “post-COVID conditions.” “In April 2020, shortly after the beginning of the pandemic, anecdotal reports from patients started to emerge that ...
Health literacy is defined by the CDC as “the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions.” In today’s world, health literacy is crucial for community members and health professionals, alike, to make everyday decisions and achieve health equity. However, many underserved and racial/ethnic communities around the country face barriers to health equity including access to health care, financial instability, and housing/transportation insecurity endangering their health. That is why Jason Rosenfeld, DrPH, MPH, and Melanie Stone, DrPH (c), MPH, MEd are helping build Health Confianza – a partnership between UT Health San Antonio, The University of Texas San ...
If you’re age 75 or older, you should know about PREVENTABLE. PREVENTABLE – the Pragmatic Evaluation of events And Benefits of Lipid-lowering – is a clinical trial to help researchers understand if taking a statin, a drug commonly used to lower cholesterol in younger adults, is helpful for older adults, specifically when it comes to maintaining health by preventing dementia, disability, and heart disease. “We really don’t know how these drugs work in older adults,” according to the research team at UT Health San Antonio, including Dr. Sara Espinoza, principal investigator for the local study site. “Most, if not all, of the studies of statins have been done in much younger people, in their 50s and 60s, but studies in adults over 75 are rare.” The national study is ...
The CDC recently revised Body Mass Index (BMI) charts for children to help healthcare providers better track growth in children and identify “severe obesity.” Before the update, BMI charts for children did not go above 37. The revised charts extend to a BMI of 60 to account for the rise of severe obesity in children ages 2-20, according to the CDC. Now clinicians can more easily see whether a child’s BMI falls within the range of underweight, ideal weight, overweight, obese, or severely obese, based on a percentile measured against other children of the same age and gender, according to CNBC and healthline.com. A BMI higher than 95% of kids of the same age and gender is defined as obese. Severe obesity is a BMI 120% higher than the 95th percentile, ...
