The places we are born, grow, live, work, and age were not created equitably for all. Women of color tend to live in places with less access to opportunity—safe places to walk and play, healthy food, quality education, public transportation, employment opportunities, and preventive health care. This hinders educational attainment, income, and physical and mental health. Fortunately, women are increasingly standing up to the historical social, environmental, and political issues that spur poor health. To celebrate Women’s History Month, let's use #SaludTues on March 13, 2018, to tweet about awesome women who have and continue to build a culture of health for Latino and all families in the places they live. WHAT: #SaludTues Tweetchat: "Women in Health, the Environment, ...
Bus service is slow and sporadic in eastern Suffolk County, N.Y. A 15-minute drive can take two hours by bus. This makes it hard to get to a doctor for people in this 19% Latino county. Take it from Byrony Freij, a local Spanish-speaking pediatric counselor. She told Newsday that some households share one car, which is usually in use during the day. Undocumented residents avoid driving. Hours on a bus to visit a pediatrician is difficult for mothers recovering from childbirth. That's why Freij is happy to see that nonprofit Organización Latino-Americana is launching a free transportation program to help Latino and all residents get to pediatric and other doctor appointments. "It's a huge relief," Freji told Newsday. "But it’s a shame that it has to be a nonprofit that ...
More Latinos walk and bike instead of drive cars than non-Latinos, which could be the key to address climate change and health equity, according to a recent English and Spanish survey by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Transportation design, however, doesn't always make it easy to walk and bike safely. Salud America! continues its three-part series exploring the issue of climate change for Latinos, today tackling whether leaders get more people out of cars and into active transportation, boosting health and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Part 1 of the series tackled what climate change is, why Latinos are worried, and whether they should be. Part 2 addressed what kinds of policies Latinos would support to address climate change.
The Rise of Latinos Walking ...
U.S. Latinos are more supportive of climate change policies and are more willing to demand political action than non-Latinos. In fact, half of Latinos (50%) think the United States should make large-scale effort to reduce global warming, even if it has large economic costs, compared to 33% of non-Latinos, according to a recent English and Spanish survey by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Salud America! continues its three-part series exploring the issue of climate change for Latinos, today addressing what kinds of policies Latinos would support to address climate change. Part 1 tackled what climate change is, why Latinos are worried, and whether they should be. Part 3 will focus on a potential solution for both climate change and health equity.
Two Big Policy ...
More than three of four Latinos worry about global warming and climate change, a higher worry rate than their non-Latinos peers, according to a recent English and Spanish survey by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Why are Latinos so worried? What policies can help? How willing are Latinos to take action, and how will that impact health equity and safer streets? Salud America! is excited to launch a three-part series exploring the issue of climate change for Latinos. Today we will tackle what climate change is, why Latinos are worried, and whether they should be. Part 2 will address what kinds of policies Latinos would support to address climate change. Part 3 will focus on a potential solution for both climate change and health equity.
What is Climate ...
Amazon, one of the biggest American companies, made it clear that public transit is an essential component for choosing a site for their second headquarters. No matter what side of the "Amazon headquarters" debate you land, public transit is a pretty reasonable public good to request from a city because it plays a major role in health, equity, economic development, and sustainability. The thing is, public transit success depends not only on local investment to expand and improve service, but also commitment from federal partners. Yet, the federal government is proposing to eliminate the Capital Investment Grant program, which matches local funds to build new transit systems and upgrade existing systems. Transportation for America created a guidebook, Fight for Your Ride: An ...
Your community can apply for a Safe Routes to Parks grant to increase equitable access and safe walking connections to parks. The JPB Foundation has provided a grant to the Safe Routes to School National Partnership to fund the Safe Routes to Parks Activating Communities program, which follows the Safe Routes to Park Framework, a collaborative effort between the National Partnership and the National Recreation and Parks Association. The framework provides a structured process by which communities can increase safe and equitable access to their parks and green spaces. The framework includes four main areas of activity: 1) Assessment, 2) Planning, 3) Implementation, and 4) Sustainability, with each area heavily infused with proactive community engagement. Grantee communities will ...
Does Tom Brady have a face that can stop traffic? Boston P.E. teacher Sam Balto wanted to find out. Balto laminated a photo of Brady to make a street sign. He put the sign in the street to slow drivers and keep students safe as they walked to his 62% Latino school, Ellis Elementary, in the city's Roxbury neighborhood, the Boston Globe reports. Before Brady: Drivers sped up to 55 mph in a 20 mph school zone. Few yielded. Some ran over crosswalk signs. After Brady: Drivers slowed down. Smiled more. “It definitely helped to get cars to slow down," Balto recently told Salud America! via Twitter.
The Brady Experiment
Balto first brought the Brady-as-crosswalk idea to WalkBoston. Brendan Kearney of WalkBoston said they spit-balled the idea on a walk audit. The audit found ...
A pedestrian is killed by a motor vehicle once a week, on average, in San Antonio. In fact, 219 pedestrians died and 607 were severely injured in nearly 4,000 pedestrian-vehicle collisions from 2011-2015 on San Antonio roadways. That's a worse rate than Austin, Houston, Los Angeles, and many other cities. It's even worse in San Antonio's lower-income areas. In these areas, communities are designed for tires and steel, rather than people. When people don't feel safe to walk for health, recreation, or transportation, it harms their quality of life. They don't have an equitable chance to live healthier lives. San Antonio leaders are working to create safer streets for all. So officials launched a Vision Zero initiative and are continuing to analyze geographical data to ...
