UPDATE: Health Equity Report Card Covers Child Opportunity, Location Affordability, Transit Access


UPDATE: Health Equity Report Card Covers Child Opportunity, Location Affordability, Transit Access

We have updated our Salud America! Health Equity Report Card to cover your county’s child opportunity score, environmental justice score, location affordability, and transit access. The Health Equity Report Card, first launched in 2017, auto-generates Latino-focused and local data with interactive maps and comparative gauges, which can help you visualize and explore local inequities in housing, transit, poverty, health care, food, education, and more. You will see how your county stacks up in these health equity issues — now including child opportunity, location affordability, and transit access — compared to your state and the nation. Then you can share the Report Card with your local leaders to shift from individualist thinking to advocating for systemic community change ...

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Keeping an Eye Out: 4 Ways to Promote Healthy Vision



For this year’s Healthy Vision Month, the National Eye Institute (NEI) is highlighting the theme of “Healthy Vision: A Family Focus” (“Visión saludable: ojos sanos para su familia”).  To ensure that everyone gets important eye health information, the NEI is sharing its helpful resources in Spanish – made through transcreation.   Transcreation is the process of taking a concept in one language and completely recreating it in another language, adjusting the literal translation to align with the cultural context of the intended audience.  “A successfully transcreated message (either written or visual) evokes the same emotions and carries the same implications in the target language as it does in the source language, but in a way that resonates with the target ...

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We Need More Complete Data on Social Determinants of Health


We Need More Complete Data on Social Determinants of Health

Data can drive action for healthy change. But what if we don’t have enough data? Or the right data? Or equitable data? Unfortunately, even with more health reports and more health dashboards than ever before, we still face inconsistent and incomplete data. We are lacking sufficient data – especially data disaggregated by race/ethnicity – on social determinants of health, firearm violence, traffic crashes, and adverse childhood experiences. Insufficient data happens for many reasons. Limited funding, limited staff, uncertain methods, logistical challenges, entrenched practices, inadequate analysis, and inadequate or non-uniform reporting after data collection are occurring at the local, state, and federal levels. Let’s explore the most critical missing data and how ...

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10,000 People Speak Up and USDA Expands Free School Meals for All Students!


Students eating lunch

The USDA has sought comments on a proposed rule to increase the number of high-poverty schools that can offer free school meals for all students. The proposal would expand the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) by lowering the minimum identified student percentage participation threshold from 40% to 25%. That means more schools and districts can opt into the CEP, which can: Increase school meal participation. Reduce stigma. maximize federal reimbursements. eliminate unpaid meal charges. reduce paperwork for school staff and families. “Many schools and even some entire states have successfully provided free meals to all their students,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “We applaud their leadership in nourishing children and hope this proposed ...

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Healthcare Coverage Low among Latinos, Regardless of Education


Latina going over insurance options.

Healthcare coverage rates are better among people with higher education levels. But Latinos still face some of the largest health insurance coverage gaps among racial/ethnic groups, no matter their education level, new Census research shows. “Those identifying as American Indian and Alaska Native ... or Hispanic had the highest uninsured rates at all education levels,” according to the Census Bureau. Let’s dive deeper into the differences in education level and uninsured rates by race and ethnicity, with a close look at Latinos. What Is the State of Latino Educational Attainment? 20.8% of Latinos age 25 to 64 had a bachelor's degree or higher in 2021, according to Census data. This is a lower rate than 60.8% of Asians (non-Hispanic), 41.5% of Whites (non-Hispanic), and ...

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U.S. Latino Economic Output Equates to World’s Fifth-Largest GDP


Latino businessman

The total economic output, or gross domestic product (GDP), for Latinos in the United States totaled to $2.8 trillion in 2020, up from $1.7 trillion in 2010. If the population of Latinos in the United States were its own country, it would be the fifth-largest GDP in the world. That is larger than the GDPs of France, India, and the United Kingdom, according to the Latino Donor Collaborative’s 2022 Latino GDP report. The Latino GDP report serves as a “factual view of the large and rapidly growing economic contribution of Latinos living in the United States.” Let’s dive deeper into the factors that contribute to the U.S. Latino GDP! Growth of the Latino GDP Today, Latinos account for 18.9% of the total U.S. population. As the Latino population has continued to grow ...

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5 Essential Frameworks for Preventing Violent Child Death


violent child death is a problem in America

The U.S. has a violent child death problem. Developing strategies to prevent violent child death from firearms and traffic crashes is a demanding task that requires consideration of numerous upstream, interrelated, and tangential issues. To help safety advocates develop strategies to prevent violent child death, we compiled five frameworks to help: Understand and explain how proposed strategies will prevent violent child death Layer multiple strategies to cover shortcomings in strategies Prioritize upstream primary prevention strategies to improve outcomes for entire populations Consider the level of intrusiveness of strategies Apply racial equity tools to ensure equitable adoption/implementation of strategies The five frameworks include: Logic Model/Theory ...

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11 Holiday Actions for Health Equity



Volunteering for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s helps other people. It gives the volunteer a nice emotional boost, too. So why not volunteer your "voice" or "actions"? We at Salud America! invite you to take or start these 11 actions to promote health equity for Latino and all families this holiday season! 1. Start a School Food Pantry! About 1 in 6 children are food insecure. They don’t know where their next meal is coming from. Your school can help these kids! Try the Salud America! “School Food Pantry Action Pack.” This is a free guide to help school personnel talk to decision-makers, work through logistics, and start a School Food Pantry to help hungry students and reduce local food insecurity. A School Food Pantry accepts, stores, and redistributes ...

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Poll: A Better Life Is Harder to Achieve for Young People, Vulnerable Groups


better life is harder

COVID-19. Monkeypox. Inflation. The housing crisis. Student debt. Climate change. There’s a lot going on. It’s understandable why young people are stressed “basically at all times.” Unfortunately, many believe the future may not be much better for young people. More than half of Americans agree that young people today are unlikely to have a better standard of living than their parents, according to a new poll from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. A better standard of living includes having the financial means to comfortably raise a family and own a home, but these goals have gotten harder to achieve with the rising cost of living and housing. Add the student loan debt crisis, ...

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