Eric Moreno is a Content Curator with the Salud America! program at UT Health San Antonio. He specializes in covering the topics of health equity and family and social support. He holds a BA from the University of Texas at San Antonio and an MA from Gonzaga University.
The term “income inequality” is one that has gained a great deal of attention in recent years. Referring to the “extent” in which income is distributed in an uneven manner in a population. In the U.S., according to the Institute for Policy Studies, the gap between the rich, poor, and everyone else has grown markedly in the past 30 years. The Economic Innovation Group (EIG), a a bipartisan public policy organization created to advancing solutions that empower entrepreneurs and investors to forge a more dynamic economy in the U.S., recently completed a study that determined that San Antonio, Texas (64.34% Latino population), has one of the worst income inequalities in the country. In San Antonio, the gap between the wealthiest zip code in the city and the poorest is among ...
Here's an interesting fact: the more education you have, the longer your lifespan can be. In recent years, Latinos have made tremendous progress in education. High school graduation rates are up while dropout rates are down. Latino students are also enrolling in two- and four-year colleges in greater numbers than ever before. That is the good news. Now, the not-so-good.
Education: Good News vs. Bad News
Latinos, despite their progress, continue to fall behind their white and black peers. In 2016, 45% of all Latinos had at least some college education, up from 35% in 1992, according to the new “Latino Education and Economic Progress: Running Faster but Still Behind” report from the Center on Education and the Workforce. However, the college education gap between Latinos ...
Getting health insurance is one of the first – and best – steps toward achieving good health. However, 1 in 10 people still don’t have health coverage and Latinos are still the nation’s largest uninsured population. Now that Open Enrollment for 2018 is currently underway what are some important facts that everyone needs to know? Cost and Financial Aid First, cost is one of the most common reasons people have given for not obtaining health coverage. Most insurance companies taking part in the Marketplace have raised premiums for 2018. However, all marketplaces, including the federal Healthcare Marketplace, offer wide-ranges of health plans including more low-cost options than ever for subsidized consumers. As it has been since the passing of the Affordable Care Act ...
During the 2016-17 school year, the number of homeless students in the New York City public school system rose again for the second year in a row. The increase, according to The New York Times, put the overall student population at a shocking milestone: one in every 10 public school students was homeless during the year. These numbers translate into 111,500 students in New York City (28.92% Latino population) that were homeless the last academic year. This was a 6% increase over the 2015-2016 school year. Across New York state, 148,000 students overall were homeless which is 5% of the state’s public school population. “After rising steadily for about five years, the number of homeless students reported to the state shot up in the 2015-16 school year, reaching nearly 100,000 ...
California state legislators recently approved three bills to boost the supply of local affordable housing. Senate Bills 2, 3, and 35 expect to raise billions to pay to build thousands of new homes for the state’s low-income residents. The bills also also aim to ease local regulations on home-building to help middle-class Californians who are now overwhelmed by costs. “The poverty rate in California, everyone talks about it,” said state Sen. Toni Atkins, author of Senate Bill 2 in an interview with The Los Angeles Times. “Look at everything we do. For child care, for education, for minimum wage, for health care. All those things are significant. And because of housing costs, it negates all those good things.”
Action for Affordable Housing
More than most states, ...
Salud America! Guest Blogger
Denise Rosales, P.E. Teacher, Mission Collegiate High School, Mission, Texas At Mission Collegiate High School, nestled on the Mexican border, we’re more than just a school. We’re a close-knit family who believes that health is the foundation of life, so we take care of one another’s well-being. Together, our 45 staff and 435 students helped Mission Collegiate earn a spot on the Alliance for Healthier Generation’s 2017 America’s Healthiest Schools list, for the second year in a row! We’re particularly proud of our achievement because nearly 100 percent of our students are Hispanic and economically disadvantaged, and the majority are either first-generation high school or college students. Our staff understand the positive effect good ...
$11,000 is a lot of money. You can get a pretty decent car. You can buy a year's worth of groceries to feed a family of four. You could even get 11 of the new iPhone X. Or you can pay a year of childcare for one child. With the average cost of center-based daycare at $11,666 a year, many low-income Latino families struggle to afford childcare. Or it comes at the expense of healthy food or preventive medical care. That's why city leaders in San Francisco (15.3% Latino) are exploring how to provide affordable universal childcare to residents to ease parents' financial burdens. District 6 City Supervisor Jane Kim plans to introduce the measure on the November 2018 ballot. “If we truly believe that families are the backbone of our city, then we all have to do what we can to ...
Where you live has an impact on almost every aspect of your life. While the U.S. is a rich, diverse country that has attracted people to its cities for centuries, not all of these cities are equal. Some are simply more livable than others. For many Latinos, especially those from low-income families, they often have to live in areas that are high in poverty and crime and often lack access to safe physical activity spaces and healthy food options.
America's Most Livable Cities + Latinos
In an effort to determine the “best” of these cities, the financial web site 24/7 Wall St. has created an index of the 50 best cities for Americans to live in. What makes a city livable? Some of the factors considered by 24/7 Wall St. include crime rate, economy, and overall ...
Open enrollment for health insurance kicks off today! Millions of people have used the Insurance Marketplace to enroll for healthcare coverage. In fact, the amount of Latinos with no coverage dropped from 26.2% to 15.1% under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) from 2013 to 2016. But it's still much higher than the drop among uninsured whites from 14.1% to 6.6% in that same span, according to a Salud America! research review. How can more people get covered?
5 Things to Know for Open Enrollment 2018
Here are some important things to know for those seeking healthcare coverage: Open Enrollment for 2018 runs from November 1 through December 15, 2017.
Coverage begins Jan. 1, 2018, if you buy coverage during this time.
You can apply for coverage four ways: online, phone, ...
