Hispanics comprised 21% of new HIV/AIDS infections each year in the United States. About 1 in 36 Hispanic men and 1 in 106 Hispanic women will be diagnosed with HIV at some point, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Latin Post reports. That's why the CDC launched a new Spanish-language campaign, Podemos Detener el VIH Una Conversación a la Vez (We Can Stop HIV One Conversation at a Time). The campaign aims to provide knowledge and promote talking about HIV prevention to "increase HIV awareness, decrease stigma and shame that are too often associated with HIV, and play a part in stopping HIV in the Hispanic/Latino community." CDC offers great educational resources and materials. It also has a four-part, telenovela-style video series about how a ...
What are the best schools for Hispanics to seek higher education? HispanicBusiness ranked the top-40 "Best Schools" based on the number of Hispanic students enrolled, degrees awarded, full-time Hispanic faculty and programs, and more. Of the 40 schools combined, Texas has 12, followed by Florida, with 10, and California, with six. "While these schools are obviously assisted by being in states with a large Hispanic population, they also have top-notch programs that ensure these students stay at home to go to graduate school," HispanicBusiness reports. "Many of them placed very high in the student-services part of our scoring." The ranking includes the top-10 in four school categories: graduate, medical, law, and business. Here are the top schools by category: ...
Cancer recently passed heart disease as the top killer of Latinos. But heart disease shouldn't be ignored. Culturally appropriate health promotion, prevention and treatment is vital to saving lives and preserving Latino families, said Dr. Eduardo Sanchez, chief medical officer for the American Heart Association, in a Huffington Post article. The article lists several reasons for concern: Preschool-age Hispanic children are four times more likely to be obese compared to non-Hispanic white children. These children are more likely to develop heart disease and diabetes as young adults.
Hispanic youths have higher smoking rates—28 percent of Hispanic eighth graders smoke compared to 23.7 percent of non-Hispanic white children. Smoking is the number one preventable cause ...
Latino kids have higher rates of asthma than other groups. In Rhode Island, the asthma rate among students is 50% in some inner-city schools with large Latino populations, putting kids in danger of missing school and trekking to the emergency room. What's a solution? A new study, called ASMAS (asthma management in schools) and led by Brown University, is using peer mentors to test the idea that "high schoolers might be able to help younger kids—like middle schoolers—manage their asthma better in school...especially if they come from the same ethnic group, and even from the same neighborhood," Rhode Island Public Radio reports. The study has recruited several peer mentors, like Andy Darius, a senior at Shea High School in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, who plays football, has ...
What issues affect the nation's 54 million Latinos? Several leading Latino-oriented organizations described the importance of various issues, including education, health care and immigration in a new report, Voxxi News reports. The report, called the American Latino Agenda Report and developed by the New American Alliance Institute (NAA Institute), was released this week. The report introduces several topics and offers recommendations for improvements. For example, in health, the National Hispanic Medical Association suggested focusing on these areas of needs: Educating Hispanics about the need to change lifestyles in order to increase healthy nutrition and physical activity through a variety of programs.
Increasing Hispanics representation in the federal ...
For the first time ever, U.S. public schools are projected this fall to have more minority students than white students enrolled, a shift largely fueled by growth in the number of Hispanic children, the Associated Press reports. White students are still most populous, but their numbers dipped just below 50% for the first time. Here is the racial/ethnic breakdown of students, according to National Center for Education Statistics: 49.8% White
25% Hispanic
15% Black
5% Asian
5% Other "The shift creates new academic realities, such as the need for more English language instruction, and cultural ones, meaning changes in school lunch menus in the Southwest and elsewhere to include tortillas and other offerings to reflect students’ tastes," according to the Associated ...
The graduation rate at Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) is 11% behind that of traditional institutions, and historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) lag 7% behind. These stats don't look good, but they're not the whole story. Researchers found that HBCUs and HSIs often deal with the significant challenge of limited institutional resources and having a student body that is less academically prepared than traditional schools and tend to receive less financial aid, according to a study in Research in Higher Education, which examined data from minority-serving institutions (MSIs) in Texas, Futurity reports:
These and other differences in student population skew the statistics and unfairly put MSIs in a bad light...
...At the same time, MSIs often function with limited ...
Did you know Latinos suffer more from certain diseases? For example, Latinos are 45% more likely to be diagnosed with cervical cancer, 65% more likely to be diabetic, and six times as likely to have tuberculosis than Whites. These health disparities are captured in a new infographic. The infographic, from Families USA, which works to heighten health care for all Americans, urges people to "work together to improve our health care system to make it high-quality, comprehensive, affordable, and accessible for ...
Dr. Cynthia Mojica, a researcher at the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, is among five new appointees to the Advisory Committee on Minority Health for the Office of Minority Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The 10-member committee advises the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for Minority Health on improving the health of racial and ethnic minority populations. Members are appointed by the secretary for their minority health expertise. Mojica, who will serve on the committee through 2018, has extensive experience conducting research in cancer prevention and control. She has made strides to increase cancer screening and diagnostic follow-up, as well as obesity prevention, with an emphasis on ...
