Tom Vilsack announced on November 17, 2015, that $4.8 million dollars would go towards grants for states needing support for child nutrition programs that include local farmers and ranchers through Farm to School programs. The grants will provide over 5,211 schools projects that include various initiatives to connect farmers and ranchers to schools and support school nutrition with fresh produce. The 2016 Farm to School Grants summary page includes lists of all the projects that will be funded through the grant, working in states across the country that are mainly schools eligible for free or reduced-price meals. Projects include, connecting local farmers with schools, culinary trainings, harvesting projects, food hubs, training of best practices, local food processing kitchens, and ...
Latinos account for 21% of people living with HIV and 23% of new HIV diagnoses each year. On World AIDS Day on Dec. 1, 2015, let’s focus on changing this by using #SaludTues to tweet about innovative campaigns to improve prevention and programs to find solutions to HIV/AIDS in the Latino community. WHAT: #SaludTues Tweetchat: “Latinos and HIV/AIDS: What’s Your Status?”
TIME/DATE: 1-2 p.m. ET (Noon-1 p.m. CT), Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2015
WHERE: On Twitter with hashtag #SaludTues
HOST: @SaludToday
CO-HOSTS: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (@TalkHIV) and Dr. Carlos Del Rio of Emory University (CarlosDelRio7)
SPECIAL GUESTS: Latinos in the Deep South (@LatinoDeepSouth) and YOU! We’ll open the floor to your stories and experiences as we ...
This year in July, the bill for the farm to school program passed in Hawai'i, allowing funding for a farm to school program coordinator and also bringing more awareness to the state with support from local politicians and community members. School advocates visited the National Farm to Cafeteria Conference in 2014 in Austin, Texas and learned about legislation and how they can put healthier food policy into practice. Needing funding for an official state Farm to School Coordinator, the efforts for policy change began. After defining the policy goal in mind, the National Farm to School Network worked with Hawai'i leaders, giving them resources and fact sheets to raise awareness of farm to school activities and getting more supporters on board. The bill was approved after the farm to ...
It’s the time of the year when we’re feeling grateful for being healthy, having a loving family and a job, but do you know gratitude can also keep your heart healthy? A study led by Paul Mills, professor of family medicine and public health at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine recruited 186 men and women who suffered from heart disease “either through years of sustained high blood pressure or as a result of a heart attack or even an infection of the heart itself.” During the study Prof. Mills asked each participant to fill out a questionnaire to rate how grateful they were for the people, places or things in their lives. “We found that more gratitude in these patients was associated with better mood, better sleep, less fatigue ...
Bishop Jose Torres, a father of three girls who plays volleyball in his spare time, was concerned about the lack of health awareness among his congregation in Severn, a suburb of Annapolis, MD. He wanted to do something about it. So with a few dedicated partners, he created a Hispanic Health Festival for his community. For over five years, the Hispanic Health Festival has provided much-needed health information and services to hundreds of Latinos in the community and has even saved a few lives.
Concern over a community's health
Located in Severn, a suburb of the city of Annapolis, MD (16.8% Latino), the Heritage Community Church has a sizeable Latino population. Bishop Jose Torres and the rest of the Church leadership were concerned about the health and health literacy of their ...
Food policy Action, a non-profit based in D.C has created a National Food Policy Score Scorecard: 2015 Progress report. This report helps voters understand which legislators are voting for issues that impact the food system. The report includes a scorecard that evaluates the members of congress based on the house votes taken on food-related legislation. It reveals who is more involved and scores members on action taken, giving the highest score of 100 to Legislators with the most action toward healthy food system change.There is also a map (picture shown above) that shows the House of Representatives in regards to districts and food-policy voting. This resource breaks down various bills related to agriculture, GMO's, free meal assistance and current 2015 acts like Farm to School ...
A vaccine can't prevent disease unless people use it. In Texas, only 39% of girls and 15% of boys ages 13-17 complete the three-dose HPV vaccine for the human papillomavirus (HPV), a common sexually transmitted infection that can cause cervical cancer and other problems. Dr. Deborah Parra-Medina has a plan to change that. Parra-Medina, a Latino health researcher at the Institute for Health Promotion Research at the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, received a new $1.2 million grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas to develop an professional education and community outreach program to increase awareness and uptake of the HPV vaccine among young boys and girls in South Texas. She and her team will train local health care providers to deliver accurate ...
A new risk-prediction breast cancer model based entirely on data from Latino women provides a more accurate assessment of Latina women's risk of developing breast cancer than existing models. The model presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) used data from the San Francisco Bay Area Breast Cancer Study, “focused on 1,086 Latina women with breast cancer and 1,411 without breast cancer cancer.” "Currently, there is no breast cancer risk-prediction model for Hispanic women," said Matthew P. Banegas, PhD, MPH, investigator with Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Oregon, and primary author of the study. "We developed a model based on data on ethnicity, nativity, and breast cancer risk factors, as well as incidence and mortality rates in ...
You may have heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but new research from Cardiff University finds a direct link between kids who eat a quality breakfast and their educational attainment. The landmark study reveals that students who ate breakfast were twice as likely to have higher academic outcomes. The study looked at 5000 students ages 9 to 11 years of age from more than 100 primary schools. Researchers examined the longitudinal effects of the link between breakfast consumption and educational outcomes. The study also showed significant differences of educational performance between students who ate sweets or crisps versus students who ate fruit and vegetables, revealing that eating sweets for breakfast had no positive impact on educational ...
