The Navajo Nation, faced with rising rates of obesity, has decided to take make some healthy changes. On Jan. 30, 2014, the Navajo Nation Council voted in favor of the Healthy Diné Nation Act to increase the sales tax on junk food, by two percent and eliminate the five percent sales tax on healthy foods such as fruits, vegetables, water, nuts and seeds. What is considered junk? Sugary drinks and snack foods that are highly processed and low in nutritional quality including chips, candy, pastries and the like. Revenue from the tax would be deposited into a special fund that will help develop projects such as wellness centers, community parks, basketball courts, running trails, community gardens and health education classes. The bill was sent to Navajo Nation President Ben ...
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 ...
Latinos struggle with higher rates of diabetes than other groups. But Latinos, who also tend to be early adopters of new media technology, are ready to use their technological savvy to help prevent, manage and treat diabetes, according to promising new survey results by electronic health records review company Software Advice. The survey, which queried 1,983 Latinos, found that: 60% of Latinos are interested in tracking diabetes-related risk factors by independently accessing their medical records online (also known as electronic health records, or EHR).
71% of Latinos would be more likely to try to lower their diabetes risk if their physician sent a personalized risk assessment.
54% of Latinos say they would log and send personal health information electronically at their ...
Are you interested in researching Hispanic health? The Hispanic Serving Health Professions Schools (HSHPS), a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development of young researchers, is seeking undergraduate students and mentors who want to collaborate on research to improve Hispanic health. Their program is called the Student Mentorship Program for Hispanic Health Research (sMPH2r). This six-month, web-based program is the first formal mentorship program of its kind, which pairs mentees with three mentors from across the country including: Primary Mentor- who guides the mentee through a research project related to a Hispanic health issue;
Secondary Mentor-who provides additional support and career guidance; and
Tertiary Mentor-a doctoral student or resident who ...
Recipe for Success has a long history of bringing fun and delicious nutrition education into Houston classrooms and encouraging kids to eat their veggies at home. Now, along with planting seeds of knowledge, the non-profit will be planting actual seeds as well. Gracie Cavnar, founder of Recipe for Success, created Hope Farms, a food-access project meant to empower residents in Houston's struggling neighborhood of Sunnyside, to provide healthful foods to their children. "Hope Farms has been on my menu of solutions ever since I conjured up the idea for Recipe for Success," Cavnar said in an article in the Houston Chronicle. "We want to teach children about food by connecting them to it in a visceral way with hands-on nutritional education and work on food access and food-justice ...
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 ...
Two University of California at Berkeley professors are hoping to prove that grocery stores and farmers' markets aren't the only places to find fresh fruits and vegetables. They've been taking students to food desert neighborhoods in the bay area to hunt for edibles grown in abandon lots, cracked sidewalks, and along chain linked fences. The project, "Reaping without Sowing: Urban Foraging and Berkeley Open Source Food," was launched by UC Berkeley ethnobotanist Tom Carlson and statistician Philip Stark. On four Thursdays this fall, they and a small group of student volunteers from Carlson’s medical ethnobotany course who are trained in medical and food plant identification roam for hours through three-square-block areas of food deserts in Richmond, Oakland or Berkeley. Using ...
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 ...
City leaders in Dallas, TX want to revamp the city's urban farming policies to allow more folks in Dallas to grow and sell their own fresh food. Many areas around town don't have a large grocery store near by, making it hard for neighbors to buy fresh, healthy food. Advocates see city gardens as one solution to diet-related illnesses that often plague those without easy grocery store access. The Office of Environmental Quality presented their plan to restructure the rules around city gardening to the Dallas City Council Economic Development Committee who endorsed it on November 17, 2014. The city already passed a community garden ordinance in 2011, but many city leaders believe it needs an update to encourage healthier eating, sustainability, and job creation. Currently, for ...
