Go here to listen to Dr. Amelie G. Ramirez, leader of SaludToday, in a radio interview about the challenges of Latino childhood obesity and her Salud America! program’s efforts to reduce the epidemic. Dr. Ramirez was a guest on “Conversations on Health Care,” a weekly radio show airing in Connecticut, Minnesota and Michigan featuring experts in health care innovation and reform. The show is made possible by the Connecticut-based Community Health Center, Inc. Dr. Ramirez has spent 30 years directing many state-, federal- and privately-funded research programs focused on human and organizational communication to reduce chronic disease and cancer health disparities affecting Latinos. Under her leadership, the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at The UT ...
Here's a collection of some of the newest information and resources on Latino cancer: Spanish-Language Health Resource
On its Web site, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) offers an Información en español section and a variety of consumer materials and other health tools in Spanish on topics such as quality of care, surgery, diseases, quitting smoking, and prescriptions. Bilingual Consumer Health Information
Numerous agencies, organizations, associations, and book and video distributors provide consumer health information in Spanish. The Web site of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine offers a sampling of sources of bilingual information. The list contains resources originating from the U.S. Hispanic Demographic Fact Sheets
There are differences across the ...
For World No Tobacco Day, Dr. Amelie G. Ramirez reflected on the effects of smoking and the opportunities to quit smoking, especially among Latinos. Dr. Ramirez, director of SaludToday and the Institute for Health Promotion Research at the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio. noted that for every one person that dies from a tobacco-related cause, there are 20 more people who are suffering with at least one serious illness from smoking, such as certain cancers, heart attacks, strokes, cataracts and skin wrinkling. Smoking is the No. 1 cancer killer of Hispanics nationally. Here is a little bit from Dr. Ramirez' op-ed article in LatinaLista:
If you smoke, just imagine some of the benefits you'd immediately achieve by quitting.
You'd have more money to spend. You'd have whiter ...
Check out these news bites on Latino childhood obesity: Average low-income person loses 8.2 years of perfect health; obese, 4.2 years
The average low-income person loses 8.2 years of perfect health, the average high school dropout loses 5.1 years, and the obese lose 4.2 years, according to study in the December 2009 American Journal of Public Health. The study shows that poverty and dropout rates are at least as important a health problem as smoking in the U.S. Heart exams of minority, overweight sixth-graders in Houston shocks experts
Heart screenings given to 94 mostly Latino and black, mostly overweight sixth graders at a school in Houston uncovered seven kids with heart conditions, the Houston Chronicle reports. The cardiologist behind the screenings, who expressed shock at ...
Check out the latest on health disparities stories, news and funding in the Winter 2009 E-newsletter from the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, the team behind SaludToday. The newsletter features: The story behind SaludToday
Using texting to promote fitness among Latina girls
A new "hub" for Latino cancer health disparities research
A new guide to help Latinos quit smoking
Research funding opportunties
Health disparities events
Health disparities resources For this and much more, check out our new ...
Ask Estefanía Evia Villareal (pictured) the best thing about not smoking any more and the 21-year-old will give you a variety of answers, beginning with the way she feels every morning when she wakes up. “First of all," she said, "that feeling of being fresh – being clean, fresh, the smell of my sheets and my clothes, (the feeling in) my mouth, my throat." Estefanía, a recent graduate of UT San Antonio who plans to get her teaching certificate so she can eventually teach elementary school children, had been a smoker for the past five years, starting in high school. Earlier this year she decided to kick the habit. It took a little while and there were some stops and starts, but when she finally quit smoking, she did it one day at a time. She walks for an hour three times a ...
Rafael Chavez, a master sergeant at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, was destined to be a Dallas Cowboys fan growing up in Mission, Texas, where Coach Tom Landry was born a legend. He even spent $75 on a Landry football card from the 1960s. Unlike his clean-cut hero Landry, though, Chavez had a blemish – he was a smoker. He started smoking at age 15. He was a regular smoker by 18. Now years later, Chavez decided to start over and quit smoking for good. He’s been smokeless for six months – and he says he feels like he has scored a Super Bowl touchdown. “[It’s like] scoring in the Super Bowl; you’re not doing it for the fans. You’re not doing it for anyone. You’re doing it for yourself because the reason you smoke is for yourself. You have to do it for yourself ...
“Daddy, you smell ugly. You smell like smoke.” These words, spoken by his daughter, helped Vicente Escobedo quit smoking.
Vicente, a 21-year-old, hardworking San Antonio native and father of two daughters, is a resource specialist for the San Antonio Fatherhood Campaign, where he helps mentor young fathers to make healthy, strong families. He began to realize that he was doing something that wasn’t making his own family strong or healthier – he was smoking.
Vicente first tried cigarettes at age 16. By 18, he was smoking two packs a week. But his daughter’s urging and the soaring price of cigarettes led Vincente to stop smoking.
In the 10 months since he has quit, he has seen how young people think smoking cigarettes makes them cool and macho, and he doesn’t want his daughters ...
