The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center's free Web-based teen smoking-cessation and prevention program, ASPIRE, now speaks Spanish. ASPIRE (A Smoking Prevention Interactive Experience) aims to prevent middle-school and high-school teens from smoking or help them quit before it becomes a lifelong addiction. The site integrates interactive media, customized messages, graphics, animations and streaming videos. "We've found that participating students are more aware about the dangers of smoking, are making more informed decisions about smoking and are less tempted to start in the first place," said developer Dr. Alexander V. Prokhorov, a professor at MD Anderson. "Removing the language barrier will help tremendously in reaching and educating Hispanic teens, especially those ...
Dr. Paula Braveman, a health researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, spoke about the importance of social determinants of health on Jan. 27 at the Cancer Therapy and Research Center in San Antonio as part of the new SALSI/CTRC Health Disparities Lecture Series. Braveman's talk highlighted her work measuring, documenting, and understanding socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparities, for a crowd of nearly 100 people. Watch video of her talk here. The SALSI/CTRC Health Disparities Lecture Series, sponsored by the San Antonio Life Sciences Institute (SALSI) and the CTRC, brings some of the top U.S. health disparities experts to San Antonio to offer the latest trends, tools and advancements in the fight against cancer health disparities. The series is a joint ...
Congrats to Dr. Deborah Parra-Medina! The researcher at our Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR), the team behind SaludToday, is one of two researchers at The UT Health Science Center at San Antonio to get a grant in the new round of prevention research awards from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. Dr. Parra-Medina will receive $297,173 for a peer education and outreach program encouraging use of the HPV vaccine to prevent cervical cancer among Latina mothers and daughters living in Texas-Mexico border communities. The program will train “promotoras,” or community health workers, who will be assisted by female college students to educate Latina mothers and daughters about cervical cancer risk factors and the HPV vaccine, which prevents cervical ...
The number of Americans with diabetes has increased from 23.6 million in 2008 to 26 million, and minority groups continue to suffer higher diabetes rates, according to new estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Diabetes affects 8.3% of Americans of all ages, and 11.3% of adults aged 20 and older, according to the CDC's National Diabetes Fact Sheet for 2011. About 27% of those with diabetes—7 million Americans—do not know they have it. Among adults, diabetes rates were 16.1% for American Indians/Alaska Natives, 12.6% for blacks, 11.8% for Hispanics, 8.4% for Asian-Americans, and 7.1 percent for whites. "These distressing numbers show how important it is to prevent type 2 diabetes and to help those who have diabetes manage the disease to prevent ...
Anyone who has been affected by cancer is invited to take LIVESTRONG's first-of-its-kind Spanish-language survey to further understand how cancer impacts Latinos and gather data that will inform evidence-based programs, resources and tools to improve their lives and close gaps in health disparities. Survey results, expected to be released laster this year, are expected to provide a comprehensive understanding of how Latinos are living with cancer and help LIVESTRONG and the cancer community improve programs and resources to serve them. Community-specific data will also be available for researchers, program planners and others. Please take the Spanish survey ...
Texas children are falling behind the rest of the country in nearly every aspect of child well-being, according to officials at Austin-based Texans Care for Children, a multi-issue, nonpartisan policy organization, Miller-McCune reports. The 76-page report, “A Report on the Bottom Line: Conditions for Children and the Texas of Tomorrow,” drawing upon Census data, demographic forecasts and national and state data sources, finds Texas is on a course for stunning economic failure unless it closes gaps in well-being for the child population, especially Hispanic children. “A sick, uneducated, unskilled work force does not propel a state forward,” Eileen Garcia, CEO of Texans Care for Children, writes in the report’s preface, according to the news report. “The devastating ...
Learn about the historical rise in the obesity rate to its current epidemic level, and see the economic and health impact of obesity if the rate keeps going up or possibly down. Then sign up to be a part of PreventObesity.net and learn more about ways to get involved. Also sign up with Salud America! to learn about the latest in Latino childhood ...
Roughly 60 million people—1 in 5 Americans—have no usual source of medical care, such as a family doctor, and Hispanics were more likely to say that high cost is a reason, according to data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Most who reported not having a usual source of care said the main reason was because they seldom or never got sick. An analysis of reasons differed in these ways: Hispanics were more likely to say high cost was the main reason why they didn't have a usual source of care (22%), compared to 12% of non-Hispanic groups.
Blacks were most likely to report that they didn't have a usual source of care because they seldom or never got sick (69%) as compared to Hispanics (62%) and whites (61%).
Asians were most likely to report that ...
Many of the longest lives in Texas are lived in what would seem to be the least likely place: along the state’s impoverished border with Mexico, according to a report by the Texas Tribune. Despite conditions that should have the opposite effect — desperately low incomes, a widespread lack of health insurance and poor high school graduation rates — the predominantly Hispanic residents of Hidalgo County live to be 80 years old, two years longer than the U.S. or Texas average. Residents of other Texas border counties live similarly long lives, according to a preliminary county-by-county analysis by the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. It's what's known as the Hispanic paradox. Read more the Texas Tribune's look at this phenomenon here. Or ...
