Woodburn, Oregon, is a small town south of Portland that’s miles away from a full-service supermarket. The Come N Go corner store, on the outskirts of town, provides hot pre-packaged foods and snacks for on-the-go families and farm workers who stop by on their way to the surrounding fields and farms. Find out how Elizabeth Montano, a mother with two jobs and the owner of Come N Go, made it her mission to give customers healthier options.
The Issue of Nutrition in the Community
Awareness: Elizabeth Montano had always toyed with the idea of opening her own shop Woodburn, Oregon (63% Latino), and when the security of her full-time job became uncertain, it looked like the time was right. In April 2012, Montano opened Come N Go, a convenience store that sells pre-packed snacks ...
In El Paso, a city located at the southwestern tip of Texas near the Mexico border, residents struggle with high rates of obesity and diabetes. A new restaurant initiative is encouraging local businesses to help children in the community make healthier choices when dining out. Jesus Roybal, one local restaurant owner, who was unhappy with what his own kids were stuck ordering on kids’ menus around town, set out to prove that creating a healthy, tasty kids’ menu can be easy to do and good for business.
The Issue of Healthy Food in a Community
Awareness: During a Sunday dinner out with his kids, Jesus Roybal was shocked at what he saw on the kids’ menu. “It was all fried, you know, it was horrible—and I was going to pay for it!” he said. Roybal owns his own ...
Obesity rates have nearly doubled over the past 15 years in Nebraska. The youth obesity rate in Douglas County, which includes the state’s largest city, Omaha, is even higher (28%) than the state’s overall rate. A group of youth leaders recognized obesity’s pervasiveness in their high-school ranks in Omaha and decided to help their peers improve their nutritional knowledge and make healthier food choices at school. This effort yielded a novel “Green is Go” marketing campaign that simultaneously highlights healthy food options in school cafeterias and stigmatizes less healthy options. Not only did the students conceptualize this campaign, they worked with school and other officials to get it implemented in their cafeteria.
The Issue of Junk Food Marketing
Awareness: ...
Sugary drinks are a large component of added calories in the American diet. Many kids have increased their consumption of sugary drinks—such as soft drinks, sports drinks, fruit-flavored drinks, and flavored milk—between 1991 and 2008, research shows. In Contra Costa, Calif., where 24% of the population is Latino, one of every three kids from low-income families are overweight or obese. A county organization worked with an advertising agency to develop a bilingual social marketing campaign, called Sugar Bites, to urge parents to choose water for their kids instead of sugary drinks.
The Issue of Sugary Drinks and Obesity
Awareness: First 5 California is a state organization funded by Proposition 10, a statewide ballot initiative passed in 1998, to conduct health and ...
Kids at Westwood Elementary School in Houston lacked programs to keep them active after classes ended each day.
Samuel Karns, a health fitness instructor/coach at Westwood, decided to step up to the challenge and find a way to bring more exercise and sport related activities to keep his students moving.
His work resulted in a series of afterschool fitness clubs, an afterschool intermural sports program, a student-led school health advisory council (K-SHAC) for elementary-school students, an action based learning lab and a one-of-a-kind district-wide initiative to bring physical activity to sixth-graders. The Issue of Physical Inactivity and Obesity
Awareness: In fall 2009, Samuel Karns was only a few months into his job as a health fitness instructor/coach at Westwood Elementary ...
When clinic worker Tatiana Maida had trouble finding many healthy products in the small grocery stores in her Latino neighborhood in Milwaukee, she decided to do something about it. She teamed up with concerned parents, dietitians academics, and store owners to launch a group dedicated to bring baked snacks, hormone-free milk, antibiotic-free eggs, and nutritious grains and seeds into the community’s food environment. When this team of people from all walks of life worked together, they were able to infuse healthy food options into the neighborhood.
The Issue of Healthier Food in the Community
Awareness: About 80% of the patients at the Sixteenth Street Community Health Center (SSCHC) in Milwaukee’s South side neighborhood are Latinos. 77% of the adult patients are either ...
Amy Cleveland, fresh out of college and just starting a career in marketing, discovered a coarse lump in her breast while putting on some tanning oil. Only age 22, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. “It was a struggle for me because I was young and there was no one my own age I could relate to or confide in about having cancer. People always say, ‘My mom had that,’ or, ‘My grandma had that.’ But it’s tough for young people,” Cleveland said. Fortunately, Cleveland—now age 28 and free of cancer—found some “Breast Friends Forever,” thanks to a unique support group for young breast cancer survivors in San Antonio (63% Latino) developed by the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at the UT Health San Antonio and Susan G. Komen San Antonio. The ...
The Guadalupe neighborhood in Lubbock, Texas has seen some tough times. With many folks struggling to make ends meet, healthy eating has not always been a priority. As a result, obesity has been on the rise in children and adults. It took one determined person to get the community back to their roots of growing delicious, fresh foods. Lala Chavez partnered with a local university, her church, and ultimately the city to plant a community garden that would give the neighborhood with a space for learning, activities, and delicious tomatoes.
The Issue of Nutrition in the Community
Awareness: Lala Chavez’s family has lived in the Guadalupe neighborhood for generations. A predominantly Latino community on Lubbock’s northeast side, the neighborhood has a history of ...
Salud America! today released six Spanish-language animated videos that shed light on the causes of solutions to childhood obesity. The videos, which are also available in English, explore the latest research into how six critical topics—marketing, school snacks, sugary drinks, neighborhood food environments, active play and access to active spaces—impact child health. The videos also feature evidence-based recommendations on how to address the problem. The child-narrated videos are part of a six new packages of research materials produced by Salud America!, a national research network on childhood obesity that is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Each topic’s package contains: a research review, an assessment of all available scientific evidence on ...
