When María Elena Bottazzi left Honduras, she never expected to one day be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Bottazzi is a microbiologist at the Texas’s Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Tex. She, along with Dr. Peter Hotez of Baylor Medicine, created the Corbevax vaccine for COVID-19. They wanted to create a unique vaccine that was patent-free and cheaper to produce than the vaccines already on the market. “Peter and I aspire to benefit people, which is why we created a vaccine for the poorest communities in the world. The team that we have built shares the same interest in promoting public health and, obviously, learning at the same time,” Bottazzi said, according to NBC Latino. Bottazzi and Hotez were ...
COVID-19 vaccination is often deterred by misinformation, from conspiracy theories to exaggerated side effects on social media. Vaccine misinformation is potent among Latinos due to lack of reliable information that is culturally relevant or in Spanish, along with little government outreach. That is why UT Health San Antonio researchers studied a new type of advertisement on Facebook to push people to get vaccinated. They used video testimonial ads of Latino peer role models, like Rosa Herrera, who tout the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine, while providing psychological inoculation by acknowledging misinformation, rejecting it, and receiving the vaccine. Compared to generic vaccine promotion ads from the CDC, the Latino peer model ads yielded a significantly higher rate of ...
For the past two years, COVID-19 has continued to ravage the United States. Data continue to show that Latinos and other people of color are disproportionately affected, amid worsening historical health and social inequities. How can we address this? Let’s use #SaludTues on March 1, 2022, to explore health inequities facing the Latino population over the past two years (and long before that), and share solutions and strategies to promote health equity amid the pandemic! WHERE: Twitter
WHAT: #SaludTues Tweetchat “Two Years Later: How COVID-19 Is Impacting Latinos”
WHEN: 1-2 p.m. ET (12-1 p.m. CT), Tuesday, March 1, 2022
HOST: Salud America! at UT Health San Antonio (@SaludAmerica)
CO-HOSTS: The Children’s Partnership (@kidspartnership); Latinx Voces LLC ...
Healthcare leaders say that the COVID-19 vaccine is the clearest path to end of the pandemic. However, vaccine misinformation spread on social media stands in the way. Many misinformation spreaders target Latino and Black communities, which have historical mistrust and skepticism in government. To combat this increasing threat, the Public Good Projects (PGP) and the New York State Health Foundation (NYSHF) created Project VCTR (Vaccine Communication Tracking & Response). Project VCTR helps track misinformation across different media sources to measure the public’s confidence in the vaccine. Currently, negative attitudes about the vaccine are declining after a strong rise in fall of 2021, according to the dashboard. They produce dashboards and track data affecting ...
COVID-19 continues to burden communities of color, particularly low-income and Latino immigrant populations. Often, these communities have fewer resources and need support and health education to fight COVID-19. That’s why groups like the COVID Community Corps (CCC) were started. “It’s about getting into those really hard-to-reach populations and communities and bringing the information in a very linguistic and culturally competent manner,” said Nayeli Salazar de Noguera, the program outreach manager for the CCC. Through canvassing and educational initiatives, the CCC aims to reach underserved communities and increase public confidence in and uptake of COVID-19 vaccines. Learn how they are building vaccine confidence in low-vaccinated parts of New Jersey!
Launching ...
COVID-19 worsened the many health disparities already facing people of color. The pandemic revealed long-standing gaps in infection control knowledge and understanding among the frontline healthcare workforce. This is why CDC launched Project Firstline, a training and education collaborative designed to ensure all healthcare workers, no matter their role or educational background, have the infection control knowledge and understanding they need and deserve to protect themselves, their patients, and their coworkers. Salud America! at UT Health San Antonio is now working with the National Hispanic Medical Association to bring Project Firstline content to frontline healthcare workers to protect themselves, their facilities, and their patients (from Latino and all communities) from ...
As COVID-19 cases from the recent Omicron variant surge across the country, health professionals are also detecting a rise in “Flurona,” which is a combination of the common flu and coronavirus. What really is Flurona and how can you avoid it? Let’s explore the facts.
What is Flurona?
Technically, Flurona isn’t a new disease. It occurs when someone contracts both COVID-19 and the flu simultaneously or one after the other. “Health experts have been warning about the possibility of a ‘twindemic,’ a scenario in which spikes in cases of COVID-19 and a simultaneous rough flu season overwhelm the country’s hospital systems, since early on in the pandemic,” according to Fortune Magazine.
Why is Flurona Happening Now?
Flurona has been happening throughout the ...
As the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines continue to be distributed across the country, several states are reporting the demographic makeup of their vaccine distribution numbers. Initially, Latinos made up a very low percentage of those getting a vaccine, despite being disproportionately hurt by COVID-19. However, in the summer and fall of 2021, more and more Latinos got vaccinated, even surpassing the number for Black and white people, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Still, disparities for Latinos persist in different states. Differences in education level, political affiliation, and health insurance also add to the vaccine gap. As some states begin to release data on booster shots, data shows that Latinos are getting ...
A new strain of the COVID-19 virus is spreading, and the Omicron variant has already reached North America, experts say. This is yet another mutation, following the Delta variant, that was first identified in South African researchers. It has quickly spread to other continents. Health experts, such as former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb, urge people to not get over-worried too quickly about Omicron, but still take available precautions like getting the COVID-19 vaccine and booster shot. "Is this making people more ill? There's no indication that it is. And in fact, there's some anecdotal information offered from physicians in South Africa that this could be causing milder illness. Now, that could be an artifact of the fact that initial cases seem to be clustered in younger ...
