When Cecil Whisenton of San Antonio, Texas, transitioned his career from the restaurant industry to the installation of healthy vending machines, he learned of the tremendous burden of obesity across the country. So, in his work with HUMAN Healthy Vending—a Los-Angeles-based company that has franchisees working to place healthy vending machines across the country—Whisenton brought the machines to local YMCAs and a San Antonio high school. He hopes to bring the healthy vending machines to more schools in the future to give kids healthier snack and drink options earlier in life. He believes schools facing the pending changes under the USDA’s Smart Snacks standards can turn to companies like Human Vending to redesign the snacking for students.
EMERGENCE Awareness: Cecil Whisenton ...
Delinquent youth face a significantly increased risk for a violent death when they're adults, a new study finds, HealthDay reports. This finding is especially true for delinquent Hispanics, teens, and girls. The study, published online in the journal Pediatrics, found that the rate of violent death among delinquent Hispanic females and males were nine and five times higher, respectively, than in the general population. "Our findings are shocking," study author Linda Teplin, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University, said in a university news release, HealthDay reports. "Death rates in our sample of delinquent youth, ages 15 to 19, are nearly twice those of troops in combat in wartime Iraq and Afghanistan." "Early violent death is a health ...
Lonnie Sclerandi, a Spanish teacher and soccer coach at Austin Independent School District, downsized his home a few years ago and no longer had land for a garden for fresh produce. He asked his school principal if he could plant a small garden outside the portable building where he taught. The principal said, "Yes." Sclerandi then researched online about what produce would be seasonal for central Texas, and how to cultivate a garden in the area. He bought gardening tools and seeds with his own money, and got started. He tended the garden for a year. Then his students started to ask him what he was doing—which eventually grew a cool new healthy change.
How the Garden Started
Food service leaders at Austin Independent School District (AISD), which is about 60% ...
Check out the new MamásConPoder website for Spanish-speaking and bilingual members of MomsRising, a nonprofit advocacy group that educates the public and mobilizes grassroots action for critical women's issues. MomsRising is an on-the-ground and online multicultural organization of more than a million members and more than 100 aligned organizations working to increase family economic security, to end discrimination against women and mothers, and to build a nation where both businesses and families can thrive. MomsRising is also a new media outlet with more than 1,000 bloggers and a combined estimated blogging and social media readership reach to over 3 million people. Read more about the new MamásConPoder campaign in this blog post. If you sign up with the new website in the ...
Highland School in Wallingford CT planted the first of their 24 garden beds in 2012. They revamped an underused tennis court to make room for the school garden, which would be used as an educational tool and to introduce students to growing their own produce. Students spend time planting, nourishing, and harvesting the garden throughout the school year, with the help of teachers who incorporate plant growth into their lessons. The garden was founded by food services director Sharlene Wong, who wanted the garden to benefit both the school and the community. Soon after implementation, Wong became increasingly busy with other school activities and was unable to maintain upkeep on the garden. Fortunately students and staff have remained vigilant in the growth and ...
Summer is here. And that means increased risk of heat-related illness, not just for pool-going families, but outdoor workers, too. Labor-intensive activities in hot weather can raise body temperatures beyond the level that normally can be cooled by sweating. Heat illness initially may manifest as heat rash or heat cramps, but can quickly escalate to heat exhaustion and then heat stroke if simple preventative measures are not followed. Heat illness disproportionately affects those who have not built up a tolerance to heat (acclimatization), and it is especially dangerous for new and temporary workers. In 2012, there were 31 heat-related worker deaths and 4,120 heat-related worker illnesses. Workers at particular risk are those in outdoor industries, such as agriculture, ...
You're invited to a webinar to explore best practices for projects to reduce cancer health disparities. The webinar, set for 11 a.m. CST on Tuesday, June 10, 2014, is conducted by Redes En Acción, a national Latino cancer research network funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and led by the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, the team behind SaludToday. The webinar will feature Dr. Eliseo Perez-Stable, leader of Redes' northwest region and chief of chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center. Perez-Stable will discuss the latest evidence-based methods for developing, implementing, and evaluating interventions on health ...
A new online toolkit aims to help community organizations across the nation deliver culturally and language-appropriate breast cancer information to Latinas. The toolkit, developed by Susan G. Komen for the Cure and the Mexican Embassy, offers free resources to both experienced and novice breast cancer educators working in the Latina community, providing culturally-specific communication resources including tips, sample talking points, breast cancer statistics, methods to address barriers to care as well as overview videos in English and Spanish. “This Toolkit is a vital resource for addressing the trends we are seeing among Hispanic/Latina women,” said Komen President and CEO Dr. Judy Salerno, in a statement. “It’s essential that women are knowledgeable about this disease so ...
Despite slow improvements in the quality of care overall, access is worsening and health care disparities, particularly for minorities and groups with lower socioeconomic status, have seen little to no improvement, according to a new report. The report, the 11th annual National Healthcare Disparities Report, is conducted annually by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), found that, compared with whites, racial/ethnic minorities receive worse care across 25-40% of quality measures. Poor and low-income people receive worse care than individuals with high income for about 60% of quality measures. These disparities are even more pronounced for measures of health care access, and among particular racial/ethnic groups. Hispanics had worse access to care than Whites ...
