This is part of the Salud America! Achieving a Cohesive Culture for Health Equity in Latino and All Communities: A Research Review»
Discrimination, Segregation Impacts Latino Students
Many Latino children are at risk of not getting the proper care, services, and environment they need for healthy formative development. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs; including racism, discrimination, and violence), poor nutrition, physical inactivity, and low participation in preschool programs can impair Latino children’s social and emotional development, health and wellbeing, and academic achievement.32 Even when minority children live in wealthier areas, research shows that they are often treated differently by teachers. “[Children of color] are more likely to be harshly punished for ...
This is part of the Salud America! Achieving a Cohesive Culture for Health Equity in Latino and All Communities: A Research Review»
Social Media and Social Justice While much has been said about the detrimental effects of social media on relationships, it is also clear that social media can be used to bring people together, and to bring about social change. The #BlackLivesMatter movement began on Twitter in 2016 after the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. It has reached and engaged millions of people across America, becoming an organization with chapters in more than 30 cities across the United States. The death of Trayvon Martin, and the subsequent deaths of Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Breonna Taylor, and others at the hands of police, ...
This is part of the Salud America! Achieving a Cohesive Culture for Health Equity in Latino and All Communities: A Research Review»
Latino Families Are More Likely to Live in Poverty
Child poverty rates are more than twice as high for black children than white children (38% vs 14%, 2019 data)10 and Latino children than white children (23.7% vs 8.9%, 2018 data) across the United States,5 according to data published in the 2019 County Health Rankings and Roadmaps Report10 and the 2018 U.S. Census Bureau Current Population Report.5 The Institute for Policy Studies found that between 1983 and 2013 there was a 51% decline in the wealth of the median Latino household (from $4,100 to $2,000); during this same period, wealth of the median white household increased by 14% from $105,300 to ...
This is part of the Salud America! Achieving a Cohesive Culture for Health Equity in Latino and All Communities: A Research Review»
Moral Disengagement Is a Key Mechanism People Use to Excuse Discrimination among People of Color, Those in Poverty
Moral disengagement is the cognitive process of decoupling one’s internal moral standards from one’s actions, thus allowing oneself to conduct unethical behavior without feelings of guilt or distress.65 In simpler terms, it is the psychological process of rationalizing bad decisions, by convincing oneself that ethical standards do not apply within a particular context or situation. Moral disengagement has been studied in relation to cruelty to animals, support for the death penalty, or in cases where victims are said to have “brought ...
This is part of the Salud America! Achieving a Cohesive Culture for Health Equity in Latino and All Communities: A Research Review»
The Benefits of Peer Modeling
Liebkind and McAlister77 designed an intervention to determine whether moral engagement and tolerance of other groups could be improved through peer modeling based on the extended contact hypothesis, which supposes that positive intergroup attitudes can be promoted via the knowledge that an in-group member has a close relationship with an out-group member. The in-group friendship partner becomes a positive peer model that demonstrates tolerance in interacting with the outgroup, while the outgroup friendship partner becomes a positive example that repudiates the negative beliefs or stereotypes about the outgroup.77 In the ...
Marcelino Serna is remembered as Texas’ most-decorated World War I veteran. Serna was the first Latino man to be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and was awarded more than 10 other awards for his bravery and service in the Battles of St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne. But he never received the most prestigious military award: The Medal of Honor. Latino advocates are petitioning the U.S. Army and federal government to posthumously award Serna the Medal of Honor, arguing that he was denied the award because he was a Mexican immigrant. “That Private Serna served during a time of extreme prejudice cannot and must not erase his acts of immense bravery and devotion to the United States,” wrote the Mexican American Legislative Caucus of Texas in a letter to the U.S. Army, ...
The United States is one of the world’s financial powerhouses, but COVID-19 is causing economic unrest and uncovering a growing wealth divide. In fact, half of households are experiencing monetary problems amid the COVID-19 outbreak in the nation’s four largest cities, all of which have large Latino populations—New York City (29.1% Latino), Los Angeles (48.6%), Chicago (29%), and Houston (44.8%)—according to a recent study from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). These new data reveal the problem is mainly impacting Latinos and other individuals facing disadvantage, according to Dr. Robert Blendon, professor of Public Health and Political Analysis at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “These communities remain so vulnerable and in some serious ...
Hispanic Heritage Month is here! This annual U.S. observance, from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, celebrates the histories, cultures and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America. We at Salud America! invite you to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month in these awesome ways.
1. Learn How Hispanic Heritage Month Started
U.S. Congressmen Edward R. Roybal of Los Angeles and Henry B. Gonzales were among those who introduced legislation on the topic in 1968.
President Johnson’s Proclamation 3869, National Hispanic Heritage Week, 1968. (Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, National Archives)
President Lyndon Johnson implemented the observance as Hispanic Heritage Week that year. U.S. Rep. Esteban E. Torres ...
U.S. leaders have "failed miserably" in planning and executing a cohesive national response to COVID-19, which has killed over 170,000 people here, according to a new report. The report is Public Health Law Watch's Assessing Legal Responses to COVID-19. It features 50 top national experts evaluating the policy response to the pandemic. The experts blame neither resources nor individual courage, but rather "a failure of leadership and the implementation of an effective response." COVID-19 revealed weaknesses in the nation’s health care and public health systems. It also worsened existing health inequities for Latinos and other people of color—even creating new disparities. Still, the report offers 100+ recommendations on how federal, state, and local leaders can better ...