Editor's Note: This is the story of a graduate of the 2013 Èxito! Latino Cancer Research Leadership Training program. Apply by March 7, 2014, for the 2014 Èxito! program. Starla Garcia
Houston, Texas Long-distance racing takes stamina and perseverance. Starla Garcia exuded these skills as a collegiate cross-country athlete—skills she learned from her father, who shelved his own dreams of a doctoral degree to take care of his family. Garcia is now employing perseverance to help underserved populations outrace the health problems they face in places like the colonias along the Texas-Mexico border, where she grew up. Garcia has been able to use her experiences and understanding of the Latino culture in the work she does as a member of the Hispanic Health Coalition in Houston, ...
Yoga can help cancer survivors get active and improve their current and future health. That's the idea behind a new $500 mini-grant for the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, the team behind SaludToday, to start a yoga therapy program for Support Lending for Emotional Well-Being (SLEW), a non-profit wellness center for women who have been diagnosed with cancer. The grant, from the Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio, will allow the team to develop an “Exercise for Cancer Survivors” educational presentation and a yoga program/curriculum that will gradually introduce participants to yoga and be sustainable for SLEW to continuing using upon the grant’s end. The ...
Editor's Note: This is the story of a graduate of the 2013 Èxito! Latino Cancer Research Leadership Training program. Apply by March 7, 2014, for the 2014 Èxito! program. Nicolas Lopez
San Diego, Calif. When is a banana not just a banana? For Nicolas Lopez, who grew up in a family who owned a banana plantation in Ecuador inherited by his grandmother, bananas are much more than a healthy snack. Bananas represent the extensive support of his late grandmother and his journey from Ecuador to the United State at age 18 to become the first of his family to attempt higher education. He has gone on to earn his undergraduate degree in biology at the University of California, Los Angeles and is currently pursuing a master’s in public health degree and a master’s of art in Latin ...
Jade Hércules, was born in July 2012 in Guatamala, where she was diagnosed with terminal liver disease. She needed a donor. Jade's condition deteriorated over the next year to the point where her parents thought, as she celebrated her first birthday in July 2013, she wasn't far from her final moments on earth. Then doctors at University of Chicago Hospital, where her family had come to seek treatment, told her parents a liver donor was found. “We were grateful to God for the parents who had the courage to donate their little boy’s organs because thanks to them our little girl is alive. We always think about the parents who made this miracle possible because it is truly a blessing that a year later although she is not yet walking, Jade can stand and is such a happy ...
Latinos comprise 16% of the U.S. population, but they account for 22% of all new HIV infections in the U.S. But Latinos often forgo HIV testing due to negative stigma, limited accessibility to testing, limited awareness of the risk of HIV/AIDS, and fear of having to disclose immigrant status. That's why it's important for Latinos to get tested for HIV, according to the Until There’s A Cure, a nonprofit founded in 1993 to create and sell a bracelet to raise funds to increase awareness, and to promote compassion, understanding, and responsibility about HIV/AIDS. Getting tested does not require disclosure of immigration status, according Until There’s A Cure, and can protect sexual partners from contracting the disease by using condoms, and those who are diagnosed with HIV can ...
Editor's Note: This is the story of a graduate of the 2013 Èxito! Latino Cancer Research Leadership Training program. Apply by March 7, 2014, for the 2014 Èxito! program. Christina Carmona
San Antonio, Texas Born and raised in San Antonio, Christina Carmona has seen how Latinos here often don’t get access to the care they need, or they face cultural myths, financial barriers or a lack of knowledge of disease prevention. Carmona used this experience to fuel her drive to improve Latino health. Wanting to make a positive change in her community and serve as a role model for her children, Carmona earneda bachelor’s degree from The University of Texas San Antonio and is currently pursuing a master’s in public health degree at The University of Texas Health Science Center School ...
CVS pharmacies have decided to stop selling cigarettes, according to several media reports. Will you quit, too? A free automated self-help “Stop Smoking” website is available in both English and Spanish to give Latinos various resources and tools to quit and track their quit progress. Visit the website in English or Spanish. The website is part of a study led by Redes En Acción: The National Latino Cancer Research Network, which is funded by the National Cancer Institute. The study is a collaboration between researchers at the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at The UT Health Science Center at San Antonio and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Participants’ smoking status will be evaluated at 1, 3, and 6 months. This project has a very strict ...
Latino kids need Salud Heroes to help fight childhood obesity. Can you step up? Visit our new website, Salud America! Growing Healthy Change, to read stories about real-life Salud Heroes who are making healthy community changes—from improved marketing to increased access to healthy food and physical activity, etc.—for Latino kids in your neighborhood and across the nation. You can also upload your own Salud Hero stories and photos. Watch a video about the site and Salud Heroes...and be a Salud Hero today! The Growing Healthy Change website was created by Salud America!, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation based at the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, the team behind SaludToday. The ...
Latinos are projected to become the largest single racial/ethnic group in the state by March of this year, making up 39% of the state’s population, up from 32% in 2000, the Pew Research Center reports. That will make California only the second state, behind New Mexico, where Latinos are the plurality (they comprise the largest percentage of any group, but not more than half). Which state might be next? It may be Texas, according to Pew Research Center. Texas Latinos make up 38.2% of the population, versus, 44.4% of non-Latino whites, according to tabulations from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. In 2000, Latinos made up 31.9% and white non-Latino whites made up 52.4% of the state’s 20.8 million residents. These numbers indicate the Hispanic population ...
