Schools can serve as so much more than space for children to learn. They can even transform community health. That is, if schools share their spaces with the public when classes are out. Fortunately, the team at ChangeLab Solutions is showing how easy and beneficial it is for schools to share use of school grounds with local residents and groups after and before school, and during summer.
What Is Shared Use of Schools?
Playing can help a kid’s healthy brain development. But many communities are not kid-play-friendly. Latino neighborhoods tend to lack safe places that welcome kids and multi-generational families to play. Many schools lock up their facilities after class ends. Shared use agreements—also called open use or joint use—are specific plans and rules that ...
An undercount of Latinos in the 2020 Census could cost 37 states hundreds of millions in federal funding. For example, a Latino undercount could cost Texas up to $14 billion of federal money for housing, child and foster care, and other family aid programs, according to a new brief from Child Trends. “The impact of any Census undercount will be felt in state budgets and communities throughout the country,” according to the Child Trends report. “At stake is federal funding for programs that help states improve the well-being of their residents, and their children especially.”
Why Is a Latino Undercount Expected?
Historically, the Census has undercounted Latinos. For the 2020 Census, even without a citizenship question, officials expect a 3% or more undercount of Latinos, ...
Rates of colorectal cancer, found in the colon or rectum, are on the rise among American adults under the age of 50. A new study, published the American Cancer Society’s peer-reviewed journal CANCER, discovered that the disease is impacting more and more young people by using data from the National Cancer Database registry. The research group, led by Dr. Boone Goodgame of The University of Texas at Austin, examined the data of over 1,185,763 patients. "Several studies have shown that the rates of colorectal cancer in younger adults have risen slowly in the US since the 1970s, but for practicing physicians, it feels like we are seeing more and more young people with colorectal cancer now than we were even 10 years ago," Goodgame, told Wiley. What were their ...
Most Americans living in rural communities say they are content with most aspects of their lives; however, two significant concerns stand out: Financial insecurity and the high medical costs. Two surveys, conducted through a partnership between NPR, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, found that 40% of that demographic struggle with healthcare, housing, and food expenses.
Healthcare Access, or Lack There Of
The surveys also found that 26% of rural Americans said they had not received desperately needed medical attention due to their limited budget. However, nine in 10 respondents did report having health insurance. An increase that is attributed to the implementation Affordable Care Act and Medicaid expansion. A decade ago, this was ...
In 2017, the CDC revealed that drug overdose fatalities are continually rising in rural communities, even surpassing rates in urban areas. Additionally, the National Farmers Union (NFU) and the American Farm Bureau Federations (AFBF) discovered that the opioid epidemic has directly impacted as many as 74% of farmers. Latinos make up roughly 23% of the agriculture industry, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics, and opioid use is on the rise in this demographic. “Opioids have been too easy to come by and too easy to become addicted to,” AFBF president Zippy Duvall said in a statement. “And because opioid addiction is a disease, it’s up to all of us to help people who suffer from it and help them find the treatment they need.”
What Are Opioids?
These drugs voyage through ...
Today's children are more diverse than at any other time in U.S. history. More than half (50.4%) of babies are Latino and other children of color. These changing demographics have substantial implications for planning policies and services that best meet the increasingly diverse familial, cultural, and language needs of our youngest children, according to the new State of Babies Yearbook: 2019 from ZERO TO THREE and Child Trends. Yet children of color and their families face big barriers to health equity. The states where these children are born and live during their first three years makes a big difference in their chance for a strong start in life. "Opportunities to grow and flourish are not shared equally by the nation’s infants, toddlers, and families," according to the ...
If you are between ages 25 and 49, your risk of getting obesity-related cancer is rising, according to new research by the American Cancer Society. The cancer-obesity threat isn't going away any time soon, either. "The fact that increases were mostly in obesity-related cancers is due to the obesity epidemic, and we would expect that the incidence would increases as this younger population ages," lead researcher Dr. Ahmedin Jemal told U.S. & World News. These findings have big implications for Latinos, who often struggle with weight and cancer already.
Study Findings
In the United States, the rate of obesity more than doubled between 1984 and 2014. To study the link between obesity and cancer among young adults, the American Cancer Society scientists examined data from 25 ...
Florida reinvented how they implement Complete Streets a few years ago, even adding coordinators to help each district create roads for people who travel by foot, bike, car, and more. And they didn’t forget about public transit. In fact, the Florida Department of Transportation’s (FDOT) created a guidebook to instruct and show examples of how to make public transit─trains, buses, & trolleys─a big part of Complete Streets. Read more below in Part 2 of Salud America!’s three-part series on transportation changes in Florida. Part 1 examined Florida’s reinvention of Complete Streets. Part 3 will cover pedestrian death reduction.
Integrating Transit and Complete Streets
Complete Streets can save lives by providing safe options for people to walk, bike and use public ...
A few years ago, San Antonio City Council member Rey Saldaña tried his own transportation experiment. He ditched his car and relied on public transit for one month. The good? Saldaña met great people. He read. He explored the city. Parking was no problem. The bad? When buses ran late, he missed connections and showed up late to council meetings. Rain drenched him at bus stops. He had to skip fun activities because of a lack of frequent routes. Saldaña’s eye-opening experiment led him to champion more funding for VIA Metropolitan Transit (VIA), the regional mass transit agency serving San Antonio and Bexar County, which operates with the least amount of funding among all major transit authorities in Texas. His efforts spurred the city to invest millions to improve public ...
