Could You Cover a $1,000 Emergency?


latino man contruction worker falling off ladder

Life happens. Would you be able to come up with $1,000 for an emergency like a car wreck, a broken arm, or a busted air conditioner? Sadly, 61% of Latino and all Americans say they could not pay for an unplanned emergency expense, according to a report by financial site Bankrate. “Even though unemployment is down and there's been a recent uptick in wages, we aren't seeing the needle move savings,” said Greg McBride of Bankrate told CNN Money. Unexpected bills and expenses aren’t uncommon. More than 30% of all U.S. households had at least one unplanned expense in 2017. But most Americans don’t have an ability to cover it. Almost one in five Americans said they would put the expense on a credit card, Bankrate reports. This usually makes the expense even higher in ...

Read More

Grad Student Gifts San Antonio with “Geography of Poverty” Map



Some areas of San Antonio (68% Latino) are much harder to live in than others. Latinos in these areas face more hardship, health problems, and die sooner. In fact, everyone living in these areas faces more hardship, health problems, and dies sooner. Lily Casura and other grad students in Social Work at the College of Public Policy at UT San Antonio (UTSA) mapped ZIP-code level data and launched a project to explore life lived in four difficult-to-live ZIP Codes in San Antonio. Their goal is to deepen conversations about equity and investment to improve quality of life. January 2019 UPDATE: Casura continues to gift San Antonio with interactive maps, to include results of the 2018 Community Needs Assessment.  Why ZIP Codes? Everyone can visualize the physical environment of ...

Read More

Community Connectors Break Down Barriers to Healthy Homes



San Antonio’s Eastside Promise Neighborhood (EPN) is a community of about 18,000 residents (67.5% Latino) who face many health disparities driven by socioeconomic inequities in income, education and access to health care. Noemi Villarreal and others at EPN sought ways to improve health care and health equity in the area. To do that, they looked for ways to promote the idea of the “medical home,” in which the patient/family is the center of partnerships with primary care providers, specialists, educational resources, and the entire community. They formed a group of dedicated "Community Connectors" to travel the neighborhood and do whatever was necessary to promote development of a medical home for every home. Addressing issues in San Antonio Noemi Villarreal, health ...

Read More

Tobacco & Fast Food Easier to Get for Latino Students



Schools with more Latino students are more likely to have fast-food restaurants and tobacco retailers within “easy reach” of them, according to a new study. The study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, analyzed more than 18,000 public schools and found that more than 50% of Latino-majority schools were within 800 meters of both tobacco and fast food outlets Only 21% of white-majority schools were. "Schools are places where we expect to be healthy, supportive environments for kids, but right outside the door (students) could be exposed to unhealthy influences," author Heather D’Angelo of Westat in Rockville, MD, said in a recent Reuters interview. "I was surprised that there were so many tobacco outlets near schools." In Latino neighborhoods in general, ...

Read More