A memorandum produced by TxDOT, dated March 23, 2011, announcing TxDOT's commitment to designing multimodal transportation facilities. Guidelines for improvements to urbanized and rural settings are provided. Read more about this policy ...
Read More
Cancer just surpassed heart disease as the No. 1 killer of Latinos. Yet, as the Latino population surges, there aren't enough Latino researchers who are working to uncover new ways to treat cancer or pave way for novel studies of cultural, linguistic and socioeconomic issues to prevent Latinos from suffering worse cancer outcomes. But there is good news. The number of Latino cancer researchers is starting to grow, thanks to Éxito! Latino Cancer Research Leadership Training, a program that encourages master's-level students and professionals to pursue a doctoral degree and careers studying how cancer affects Latinos differently. Éxito! participants attend a five-day summer institute that enhances understanding of cancer and research, encourages networking among peers and leaders in ...
Read MoreEditor's Note: Apply by March 15 for the 2013 Èxito! Latino Cancer Research Leadership Training program. Elie Benavidez, a master’s-degree student at The University of Texas at San Antonio, already is making strides to improve the lives of Latinos. She teaches elementary-school students and volunteers her time to increase local access to healthy food. Now Benavidez, inspired by her mother’s cancer battle, is considering seeking a doctoral degree and doing cancer research. That’s why she and 19 other master’s-level students or health professionals joined the Institute for Health Promotion Research’s second-annual Summer Institute of Éxito! Latino Cancer Research Leadership Training on June 7-11, 2012, in San Antonio. Exito! encourages participants to pursue a doctoral ...
Read MoreThroughout the country, people are coming together with a shared vision, strong leadership, and commitment to making needed and lasting changes that broadly improve community vitality. This is happening in large urban settings and small rural ones; it's happening in places with tremendous resources and in places with few resources to draw from; it's happening in places with relatively few health challenges and in places where the challenges are many and daunting. One place is San Bernardino, Calif. In 2006, officials launched the San Bernardino Healthy Community Initiative. Since then, 17 of the county's 24 cities have launched their own healthy city initiatives, including features such as Safe Routes to School, community gardens, shared resources and more. Watch more about ...
Read MoreEditor's Note: This is the testimonial of a graduate of the 2011 Summer Institute of Èxito! Latino Cancer Research Leadership Training. Read more testimonials here or apply by March 1 for the 2012 Èxito! program. David Irizarry McAllen, Texas David Irizarry wasn’t sure where his career path was heading. With a background in political science and biology, he eventually decided to pursue a master’s degree in public health at the Texas A&M Health Science Center’s School of Rural Public Health in McAllen, Texas, where he also works as an administrative intern at a local hospital and a research assistant on campus. To further refine his career path and learn about doctoral programs, he joined Éxito! Latino Cancer Research Leadership Training—which aims to increase ...
Read MoreEditor’s Note: This is a 20-part series featuring new research briefs on Latino childhood obesity, nutrition, physical activity and more by the 20 grantees of Salud America! Part 9 is Dr. Javier Rosado. Find all briefs here. Dr. Javier Rosado “Paying Attention to Children’s Weight in Pediatric Primary Care” In his Salud America! pilot research project, Dr. Javier Rosado of Florida State University assessed how much weight-related medical attention children get during well-child checkups at a pediatric community health center in a rural, largely Latino migrant farm-worker community in Florida. Key preliminary findings include: some parents are not concerned about their child’s weight; obesity among girls raised the highest concern. The child’s gender also ...
Read MoreFood access and mobile food vendors make eating healthy food a challenge in Texas colonias—rural, predominantly Latino settlements along the U.S.-Mexican border that often lack water, electricity, and other infrastructure. Check out a video discussion of colonia issues with Dr. Joseph Sharkey, a professor at The Texas A&M Health Sciences Center and a Healthy Eating Research ...
Read MoreEditor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series that will highlight the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s work in Latino communities across the country. When his only child Emilio died of cancer shortly before his sixth birthday, Richard Nares found his world was shattered. As he and his wife tried to put their lives back together, Nares realized his priorities had changed. “All I wanted to do was help other families who were going through what we went through,” said Nares, who was an artist and picture framer. Putting his family’s tragedy and hard-earned knowledge to use, Nares and his wife Diane established the Emilio Nares Foundation to transport underprivileged families whose children are battling cancer to their medical visits at Rady Children’s Hospital ...
Read MoreEditor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series that will highlight the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s work in Latino communities across the country. In the early days of his career—and also of the HIV/AIDS epidemic—Gabriel Rincón, DDS, spent part of his dental residency caring for AIDS patients in the final stages of their disease. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was not much information being circulated about HIV, particularly in New York City’s Mexican American community, for whom the topics of sex and gender roles were taboo. “I saw people in my community getting infected with HIV/AIDS, yet there was nothing in Spanish about the disease or how to prevent it,” Rincón said. So Rincón developed a culturally sensitive presentation to ...
Read More