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Amelie Ramirez

I am director of Salud America! at UT Health San Antonio. I have spent 30 years directing research on human and organizational communication to reduce chronic disease, cancer, and obesity health disparities affecting Latinos.

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Articles by Amelie Ramirez

Strategy for Equitable Change: Effective Communication


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This is part of the Salud America! Achieving a Cohesive Culture for Health Equity in Latino and All Communities: A Research Review» The Power of Effective Communication Strengthening communication is important as well for promoting compassion for those of color and those in poverty. Baron and Jacksteit 84 developed a method to establish productive conversation patterns between people who have difficulty communicating due to negative perceptions or stereotypes, polarizing views, and distrust. The method attempts to facilitate conversations that allow the participants to truly understand each other’s values, concerns and motivations rather than those that devolve into reinforcement of negative stereotypes or assumptions. The so-called Public Conversations Project relies on ...

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Research: Latino Healthcare Coverage Has Improved, But Gaps Remain


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This is part of the Salud America! Achieving a Cohesive Culture for Health Equity in Latino and All Communities: A Research Review» Impact of the Affordable Care Act The Patient Accountability and Affordable Care Act, generally referred to as the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, was signed into law in March 2010. The ACA was designed to expand insurance coverage, improving access to health care. Key provisions were included to benefit those of lower SES, including Medicaid expansion and federal health subsidies for those living at 138% of the federal poverty level, and large subsidies for those at 100% to 400% of the federal poverty level who purchased insurance plans through ACA exchanges. In January 2014, the most impactful ACA provisions took effect, including the expansion of ...

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Policy Implications: A Cohesive Culture for Health Equity in Latino and All Communities


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This is part of the Salud America! Achieving a Cohesive Culture for Health Equity in Latino and All Communities: A Research Review» Research Review: Conclusions Inequality, including but not limited to income and healthcare inequality, is perpetuated by implicit racial or ethnic bias. Implicit bias influences behavior regardless of intentions and can result in unintentional bolstering of inequity. System justification is a way in which advantaged individuals justify the status quo to help buffer stress from negative events and cope with guilt and distress associated with the existing socioeconomic order. The disadvantaged also engage in system justification, though this may be detrimental to their psychological well-being. People living in rural areas have less access to ...

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Research: Discrimination Impacts Life, Health Outcomes for Latinos


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This is part of the Salud America! Achieving a Cohesive Culture for Health Equity in Latino and All Communities: A Research Review» The Impact of Discrimination is Far-Reaching for Latinos, Other People of Color The collective findings on the impacts of discrimination on education, opportunity, and health are critical for people of color. Overall, more Americans say that being Latino hurts people’s ability to get ahead in this country (51%) than say it helps (18%) or that it neither helps nor hurts (30%), according to 2019 and 2020 Pew Research Center surveys.39,40 Among Latinos themselves, about 23% say being Latino has hurt their ability to get ahead at least a little. More Latinos than Whites also say they have been treated unfairly in hiring, pay, or promotion (26% to 19%), ...

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Mechanism of Discrimination: The Problem of Implicit Bias


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This is part of the Salud America! Achieving a Cohesive Culture for Health Equity in Latino and All Communities: A Research Review» Implicit Bias Is a Key Mechanism People Use to Excuse Discrimination among People of Color, Those in Poverty Bias is the tendency to favor one group over another. Most people think they harbor no bias toward other people, or they believe they know their biases and don’t act on them. The first type of bias is explicit bias, or overt bias. Explicit bias is a consciously held set of beliefs about a social group. Acting on race or ethnicity-based bias would be conscious, or explicit, racism, which many Americans openly reject, although which still exists in American society. The second type of bias is implicit bias, or unconscious bias. Implicit ...

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Research: Discrimination Impacts Educational Outcomes for Latinos


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This is part of the Salud America! Achieving a Cohesive Culture for Health Equity in Latino and All Communities: A Research Review» Discrimination, Segregation Impacts Latino Students Many Latino children are at risk of not getting the proper care, services, and environment they need for healthy formative development. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs; including racism, discrimination, and violence), poor nutrition, physical inactivity, and low participation in preschool programs can impair Latino children’s social and emotional development, health and wellbeing, and academic achievement.32 Even when minority children live in wealthier areas, research shows that they are often treated differently by teachers. “[Children of color] are more likely to be harshly punished for ...

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Strategy for Equitable Change: Social Media


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This is part of the Salud America! Achieving a Cohesive Culture for Health Equity in Latino and All Communities: A Research Review» Social Media and Social Justice While much has been said about the detrimental effects of social media on relationships, it is also clear that social media can be used to bring people together, and to bring about social change. The #BlackLivesMatter movement began on Twitter in 2016 after the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. It has reached and engaged millions of people across America, becoming an organization with chapters in more than 30 cities across the United States. The death of Trayvon Martin, and the subsequent deaths of Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Breonna Taylor, and others at the hands of police, ...

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Research: Poverty among Latinos


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This is part of the Salud America! Achieving a Cohesive Culture for Health Equity in Latino and All Communities: A Research Review» Latino Families Are More Likely to Live in Poverty Child poverty rates are more than twice as high for black children than white children (38% vs 14%, 2019 data)10 and Latino children than white children (23.7% vs 8.9%, 2018 data) across the United States,5 according to data published in the 2019 County Health Rankings and Roadmaps Report10 and the 2018 U.S. Census Bureau Current Population Report.5 The Institute for Policy Studies found that between 1983 and 2013 there was a 51% decline in the wealth of the median Latino household (from $4,100 to $2,000); during this same period, wealth of the median white household increased by 14% from $105,300 to ...

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Mechanism of Discrimination: The Problem of Moral Disengagement


Latino boy sad moral disengagement cohesive culture research review

This is part of the Salud America! Achieving a Cohesive Culture for Health Equity in Latino and All Communities: A Research Review» Moral Disengagement Is a Key Mechanism People Use to Excuse Discrimination among People of Color, Those in Poverty Moral disengagement is the cognitive process of decoupling one’s internal moral standards from one’s actions, thus allowing oneself to conduct unethical behavior without feelings of guilt or distress.65 In simpler terms, it is the psychological process of rationalizing bad decisions, by convincing oneself that ethical standards do not apply within a particular context or situation. Moral disengagement has been studied in relation to cruelty to animals, support for the death penalty, or in cases where victims are said to have “brought ...

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