This is part of the Salud America! Achieving a Cohesive Culture for Health Equity in Latino and All Communities: A Research Review»
The Benefits of Peer Modeling
Liebkind and McAlister77 designed an intervention to determine whether moral engagement and tolerance of other groups could be improved through peer modeling based on the extended contact hypothesis, which supposes that positive intergroup attitudes can be promoted via the knowledge that an in-group member has a close relationship with an out-group member. The in-group friendship partner becomes a positive peer model that demonstrates tolerance in interacting with the outgroup, while the outgroup friendship partner becomes a positive example that repudiates the negative beliefs or stereotypes about the outgroup.77 In the ...
Marcelino Serna is remembered as Texas’ most-decorated World War I veteran. Serna was the first Latino man to be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and was awarded more than 10 other awards for his bravery and service in the Battles of St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne. But he never received the most prestigious military award: The Medal of Honor. Latino advocates are petitioning the U.S. Army and federal government to posthumously award Serna the Medal of Honor, arguing that he was denied the award because he was a Mexican immigrant. “That Private Serna served during a time of extreme prejudice cannot and must not erase his acts of immense bravery and devotion to the United States,” wrote the Mexican American Legislative Caucus of Texas in a letter to the U.S. Army, ...
The United States is one of the world’s financial powerhouses, but COVID-19 is causing economic unrest and uncovering a growing wealth divide. In fact, half of households are experiencing monetary problems amid the COVID-19 outbreak in the nation’s four largest cities, all of which have large Latino populations—New York City (29.1% Latino), Los Angeles (48.6%), Chicago (29%), and Houston (44.8%)—according to a recent study from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). These new data reveal the problem is mainly impacting Latinos and other individuals facing disadvantage, according to Dr. Robert Blendon, professor of Public Health and Political Analysis at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “These communities remain so vulnerable and in some serious ...
Hispanic Heritage Month is here! This annual U.S. observance, from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, celebrates the histories, cultures and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America. We at Salud America! invite you to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month in these awesome ways.
1. Learn How Hispanic Heritage Month Started
U.S. Congressmen Edward R. Roybal of Los Angeles and Henry B. Gonzales were among those who introduced legislation on the topic in 1968.
President Johnson’s Proclamation 3869, National Hispanic Heritage Week, 1968. (Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, National Archives)
President Lyndon Johnson implemented the observance as Hispanic Heritage Week that year. U.S. Rep. Esteban E. Torres ...
U.S. leaders have "failed miserably" in planning and executing a cohesive national response to COVID-19, which has killed over 170,000 people here, according to a new report. The report is Public Health Law Watch's Assessing Legal Responses to COVID-19. It features 50 top national experts evaluating the policy response to the pandemic. The experts blame neither resources nor individual courage, but rather "a failure of leadership and the implementation of an effective response." COVID-19 revealed weaknesses in the nation’s health care and public health systems. It also worsened existing health inequities for Latinos and other people of color—even creating new disparities. Still, the report offers 100+ recommendations on how federal, state, and local leaders can better ...
Latino farmworkers living in rural communities are experiencing some of the most devastating effects of the coronavirus pandemic. These laborers are experiencing high rates of COVID-19 infections. Their access to medical care, which was limited even before the virus, has only worsened during the pandemic. On top of everything else, farmworkers are also having to battle against poor workplace treatment, according to Rosalinda Guillen, the Executive Director of Community to Community Development. "There's just a myriad of indignities that the workers suffered at those packing sheds that we're hearing from other workers in other areas where the same thing is happening over and over and over again," Guillen said. "It is about the disease. It is about workers feeling that finally it ...
Helping families recover from the economic impact of COVID-19 requires far more than a paycheck, particularly when already underfunded social services and transit agencies face budget cuts. To build resilience after COVID-19, cities need to invest in people and in places. More specifically, cities need to build a community-based workforce to ramp up social services, and cities need to invest in affordable transportation options.
Cities Face More Than COVID-19 Economic Devastation
The economic fallout from COVID-19 is real for cities and families, particularly for Latinos, who were already drastically underpaid compared to white workers. Beyond unequal pay, Latino and low-income families face a legacy of discriminatory policies and practices that have resulted in unaffordable ...
When COVID-19 struck, it impacted Latinos more than others. That is why Salud America!, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded national program at UT Health San Antonio, immediately applied its digital content curation model to create equitable, culturally relevant information and action opportunities to address pandemic effects on Latinos. The result? Record spikes in program website traffic and confirmation of the curation model's capacity to increase people's exposure to culturally relevant and action-oriented information for a novel topic like COVID-19, according to a new study published in the journal Health Promotion Practice. "We have shown that digital content curation is an effective, measurable public health promotion tool to disseminate awareness-raising and ...
Too many social support tasks fall to armed police officers. As local leaders discuss COVID-19 recovery plans, they need to consider how to address these social support issues in tandem with economic issues. Many cities are exploring how to reform or reimagine police. This often includes partnering with community-based social, behavioral, and mental health services. However, community partners may lack capacity for city-wide change. That’s why cities need to build a community-based workforce to coordinate community development, help families recover from the pandemic’s economic fallout, and reform police, simultaneously.
Expensive Spending on Traditional Policing
Public safety is a major city expense. Of the 50 largest cities, spending on police accounts for the ...
