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.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than one-third of all adults in the United States. For Latinos, the situation is worse, as 42% of Latino adults are considered obese and more than 77% are considered overweight or obese. As part of National Nutrition Month, the financial site WalletHub analyzed the 100 most populated U.S. metro areas to determine the ones with the most weight-related health problems. The “holistic” approach included overweight and obesity into its findings and examined 14 key metrics, including “percentage of physically inactive adults,” and “percentage of adults eating fewer than one serving of fruits and vegetables per day,” to determine their findings. According to the research findings, the “fattest” metro ...
Many Latinos are at a high risk of suffering from type 2 diabetes. Nearly 17% of all Latinos living in the United States dealt with diabetes. The prevalence also rises dramatically with age as more than 50% of Latino women and more than 44% of Latino men will deal with diabetes by the time they reach 70 years of age. Recently, a program by the YMCA was conducted in which participants at risk of developing diabetes lost nearly 5% of their overall body weight. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) gave the YMCA nearly $12 million in 2011 to launch the program and it has proved successful enough to expand. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell called the program “a milestone for prevention and America’s health.” The program included ...
A new study has determined that fewer Americans overall are dying from heart disease compared to 40 years ago. However, the trend is not consistent everywhere in the United States. Researchers have found that the nation’s leading “hotbeds” for heart disease have migrated to the southern portion of the country. According to the new federally funded research, the counties in the country were clustered in the northeast in the 1970s. Now, they are concentrated in what is considered the “deep” South, a region where the Latinos population is growing faster than anywhere else in the United States. The study has not determined the causes for the shift, only the trend. “[From] other studies we know the socioeconomic conditions of a county can affect rates of smoking and obesity, ...
Obesity, cancer, and health disparities were increasing in the northern Colorado city of Fort Collins (11.43% Latino). In response, a community advocacy group called Vida Sana formed to find ways to alleviate these disparities and support Latino residents. Dierdre Sullivan, a founding member of Vida Sana, soon recognized the best way to boost health was to use promotoras (community health workers) to teach residents how to help themselves.
Latinos struggle with health disparities in Colorado
Dierdre Sullivan, an activist in Fort Collins, Colo., has witnessed the local Latino population grow rapidly by 52% from 2000 to 2010. Sullivan said health disparities increased rapidly, too. About 14% of Latinos live in poverty. Many healthcare providers lack cultural ...
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Office of Minority Health (CMS OMH) recently released an interactive map that helps in the understanding of disparities in chronic diseases geographically for Medicare beneficiaries. The Mapping Medicare Disparities (MMD) Tool can identify disparities in health outcomes, utilization, and spending by race, ethnicity, and geographic location. “Our commitment to health equity begins with properly measuring the care people get and having an honest dialogue on how and where we need to improve,” said CMS Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt. “Today’s tool aims to make it harder for disparities to go unaddressed.” Understanding the geographic differences in certain disparities is important for a number of reasons. This understanding ...
More than 1 in 3 Americans are overweight or obese. The problem extends greatly to Latinos as well, where the obesity rate is 77%. Obesity is a huge risk factor for many diseases, including Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Most treatment guidelines recommend that people who are overweight or obese try to lose 5% to 10% of their weight to achieve significant health improvements A research team from the Washington University School of Medicine, with support from the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disorders, studied 40 sedentary individuals dealing with obesity. Half were told to maintain their weight and the other half were told to lose 5% of their weight. People in the weight-loss group consumed a lower ...
The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), as part of an ongoing partnership with Facebook, recently announced upgrades to an education/technology center at Mission Graduates, a non-profit organization focused on college attainment K-12 students, located in San Francisco, Calif. “With the support of Facebook, LULAC will continue to ensure that the Latino community in San Francisco has access to up to date technology which will allow Latino students to compete at a level playing field,” said LULAC National President Roger C. Rocha, Jr. As part of LULAC’s Empower Hispanic America with Technology (EHAT) initiative, the upgrades to the center include new desktop computers, high-speed Internet, and software. The goal of EHAT is to close the technology gap in underserved ...
Researchers at Kaiser Permanente in California and Oregon surveyed its 12,409 Latino members and found that Latino adults aged 69 and older were significantly less likely to utilize the health organization’s online patient portal. It is believed that organizations who serve elderly populations should be aware of such disparities. Older Latino and African American patients who had access to the portal were less likely to use the tool. A similar study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association also found differences in the usages of online portals by patients. In the Chicago area, of the over 500 elderly adults with access to online portals, only 57.5% actually registered to use the services. The study also found that only 31% of those surveyed had a smartphone, ...
A study from the Center for Outcomes Research and Education (CORE) determined links between housing and health outcomes. The report, focusing on the Portland, Ore. area (9.64% Latino population). The researchers found when Medicaid-covered residents moved into 145 different affordable housing properties their healthcare experiences changed dramatically. This study closely studies the link between affordable housing and health care. It utilized the metrics of having better connections to primary care, emergency room visits, access to and quality of health care, and costs. In the year after moving into the housing, residents increased their utilization of primary care by 20%. The affordable housing residents studied also reported that their access to health care and its quality ...
