Increasing rates of obesity and diabetes may be contributing to a steep rise in liver cancer, or hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), among Latinos in the U.S., particularly in Texas. Overall U.S. HCC rates grew from 1.7 cases to 5 cases per 100,000 from 1980 to 2005, and reached 7.5 cases per 100,000 among Latinos, according to data presented at a recent American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) conference by Dr. Amelie Ramirez, director of the Institute for Health Promotion Research at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, the team behind SaludToday. Dr. Ramirez and her colleagues also found that Latinos accounted for about 33% of HCC cases in Texas and 75% of cases in South Texas, while also documenting corresponding increases in the prevalence of obesity ...
Editor's Note: This is the testimonial of a graduate of the 2011 Summer Institute of Èxito! Latino Cancer Research Leadership Training. Read more testimonials here or apply by March 1 for the 2012 Èxito! program. Marina Daldalian
Kansas City, Kan. Growing up, Marina Daldalian’s mother, the daughter of a migrant worker, and her father, a native of Lebanon, taught her the importance of education and about caring for those with few resources. As she volunteered locally and abroad for several years, a focus on health became Daldalian’s calling. In Kansas City, Kan., Daldalian is a master’s of public health degree student at the University of Kansas Medical Center, where she also serves as a research assistant in the JUNTOS center for Advancing Latino Health in the Department of ...
Editor's Note: This is the testimonial of a graduate of the 2011 Summer Institute of Èxito! Latino Cancer Research Leadership Training. Read more testimonials here or apply by March 1 for the 2012 Èxito! program. Christina Munoz-Masso
Puerto Rico Christina Munoz-Masso works hard to improve the health of boricuas—Puerto Ricans—and Latinos in general. She is an epidemiologist at the University of Puerto Rico Comprehensive Cancer Center. She coordinates a study investigating DNA methylation in leukemia patients and collaborates on a population-based study on cervical cancer. After Munoz-Masso graduated from college with a bachelor’s degree in biology, she applied for a master’s degree in epidemiology because it allowed her to combine science with helping people. To add an ...
LIVESTRONG recently announced the creation of an iPad App to help people manage their cancer experience. The app, called LIVESTRONG Cancer Guide App + Tracker, lets you store and access information relevant to your treatment and survivorship electronically to your iPad. The tracker helps you track your daily symptoms, provides space for you to journal your experience, keep track of important records and contact information. The app's Cancer Guide will help you know what to expect, learn what questions to ask, and connect to resources. Read more about the app or watch a video here or ...
Editor's Note: This is the testimonial of a graduate of the 2011 Summer Institute of Èxito! Latino Cancer Research Leadership Training. Read more testimonials here or apply by March 1 for the 2012 Èxito! program. Donaji Stelzig
Houston, Texas Contributing in several research studies at the University of Texas School of Public Health’s Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research in Houston, Mexico native Donaji Stelzig developed a desire to work with minority populations, promote opportunities, and foster team work with diverse background community members. Since then, she’s become a full-time senior health education specialist at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Division of Public Affairs, carrying out community outreach. Stelzig is part of many ...
The 2012 Éxito! Latino Cancer Research Leadership Training application is now available for download! Éxito! conducts a five-day summer institute and offers internships to encourage minority master’s-level students and master’s trained health professionals to pursue a doctoral degree and a career in Latino cancer health disparities research. The 2012 summer institute is June 7-12, 2012, in San Antonio, Texas. Éxito! participants also are eligible to receive one of six paid internships (see details in application). How exactly can the program benefit you? Ask Mariana Arevalo, a graduate of the 2011 Éxito! program: "Éxito! was a boost of confidence and a tremendous encouragement for me to apply to doctoral programs. Now more than ever, I’m confident that Latino researchers ...
Find the latest in Latino health—from fighting Latina breast cancer to helping Latinos pursue doctoral degrees—in the new E-newsletter from the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at The UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, the team behind SaludToday. The E-newsletter has these stories: Story and Video: Giving Latinas a Chance vs. Breast Cancer (Pg 1)
Story: How a Typewriter Helped a Latina Launch a Career in Health Promotion (Pg 2)
Story and Video: Depression after Cancer Keeps Latinas from Follow-Up Care (Pg 3)
Story: Apply by 3/1/12 for Éxito Program to Get Help Pursuing a Doctoral Degree (Pg 5)
Story: San Antonio Schools Get Salad Bars (Pg 6)
Story and Video: Latino Man Works to Interrupt Street Violence (Pg 8 ) The E-newsletter is jam-packed ...
In the late 1980s, Dora Alicia Gonzalez helped do one of the first assessments of socioeconomics and health care locations in her native Brownsville, Texas. She even helped write a 300-page report—page by page—on a typewriter. Gonzalez said the experience, even despite its arduous typing task, sparked her interest in public health and improving the lives of the underserved. Over the last 20 years she has helped meet the needs of uninsured residents as part of a primary health care agency, and also fostered community-based partnerships and developed and implemented cancer education training sessions along the Texas-Mexico border for the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Today, Gonzalez builds community health as a program coordinator at the Institute for Health Promotion Research ...
Latinas and older, poorer women all are more likely to have lymph nodes under the armpit removed unnecessarily during breast cancer surgery, according to a new study, Reuters reports. That's despite 2005 guidelines recommending a gentler surgery that spares most of the lymph nodes, avoiding side effects like pain, swelling and numbness down the line. Based on a California cancer registry, researchers found that more than a third of about 18,000 women who had undergone mastectomy for early-stage breast cancer had had their lymph nodes removed as well. Yet all of these women had node-negative tumors, meaning the cancer had not spread beyond the ...
