People with fair skin, blue eyes and red hair still have the highest risk of skin cancer, but doctors say the number of darker-skinned patients with skin lesions is rising, both under the hot Texas sun and nationally. Dr. Bahar F. Firoz of The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio says melanoma is increasing among Hispanic women in particular. “Among Hispanic women of all ages in Texas, melanoma incidence increased 4.8 percent every year from 2002 to 2006. That is a very high rate,” Dr. Firoz said. “In Hispanic women over 50, this incidence is a whopping 10.8 percent. Overall, the incidence of melanoma is increasing in darker-skinned patients.” Dr. Firoz, assistant professor of dermatology and cutaneous surgery in the Health Science Center School of ...
If San Antonio ends up prohibiting smoking in indoor workplaces, its restaurants and bars are not likely to lose patrons to the few and geographically separated establishments outside the city limits that do allow smoking, according to a new analysis by the Institute for Health Promotion Research at The UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, the team behind SaludToday. The analysis identified and mapped the 165 licensed-to-serve alcohol establishments in 30 incorporated towns outside San Antonio, but within Bexar County. The vast majority (117) of those establishments already are smoke-free. The remaining 48 that do allow smoking are fairly geographically separated from each other and, even if weighed as a whole, don’t have the capacity to sustain an influx of smoking customers if ...
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 ...
In the wake of the city’s $15.6 million federal grant to fight childhood obesity, San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro has named Amelie G. Ramirez, Dr.P.H., director of the Institute for Health Promotion Research at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, a co-chair of his new Mayor’s Fitness Council, which will develop ways to spur improved community nutrition and activity. The council, which recently met for the first time, also is co-chaired by Wane McGarity, a former Dallas Cowboy and current H-E-B health promoter, and Tony Canty of Labatt Food Service and the YMCA of Greater San Antonio. The council will develop and implement initiatives in these five main areas: • Media and community outreach/education;
• Corporate and organizational ...
The Smoke-Free San Antonio campaign, which support a 100% smoke-free city to protect the health of our community, is now on Facebook. "Like" the campaign on Facebook today! Learn more about the orgaization ...
Rave reviews are coming in for a visually stunning booklet featuring minority teens' anti-smoking photos from a project for which eight San Antonio high-school students took photos and wrote captions to visually describe tobacco problems in their neighborhoods to policy-makers. "This is a wonderful example of how to invigorate public health messaging and make it 'sing' within one of your priority populations. The involvement of youth in the planning and execution of the project in a meaningful way is something that should be replicated throughout other areas of the State. Congratulations to...all the 'gang' at the UT Health Science Center for working with the San Antonio Tobacco Prevention and Control Coalition to carry it out!" said Gail Sneden, a project director of Applied Research ...
Many decry the fact that only 3 to 5 percent of adults with cancer in the U.S. join clinical trials, but a deeper challenge emerges when you put faces to these numbers. Close to 90 percent of those who do enroll in trials are white, and only 5.6 percent are Latino. Read here about what the National Cancer Institute (NCI) is doing to increase the enrollment of minority and underserved patients in clinical trials. Also read more about the effort by Redes En Acción, the Latino cancer research network led by the Institute for Health Promotion Research at the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, the team behind SaludToday, to use patient navigation to boost pediatric cancer clinical trial recruitment in South Texas. Redes, working closely to outreach to and educate the Latino ...
At ages 3-5 our little ones learn the ABCs, how to count, and the primary colors. But how many preschoolers – whether from humble or affluent roots – are taught the building blocks of eating well and regular exercise? Juntos y Saludables (Get Healthy Together) is a two-year obesity and diabetes prevention project in several San Antonio, Texas, preschools that teach primarily Mexican-American children. The program is led by the Institute for Health Promotion Research at The UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, the team behind SaludToday, and UT at San Antonio through the institutions’ joint San Antonio Life Sciences Institute. Get Healthy Together is testing whether it is possible to indoctrinate students — for life — with healthy behaviors via positive interactions ...
With the nation facing a healthcare crisis, Latinos and racial/ethnic minorities are paying a high price for health care disparities: diminished health and, quite literally, lives lost, the New York Times-Union reports. Hispanic women, for example, have the highest rates of new cases of cervical cancer and the second highest death rate from cervical cancer. More from the story:
Studies have found that cultural and communications challenges lead to treatment delays, receipt of wrong benefits or services, misdiagnoses and medical errors.
People who have limited English proficiency are more likely to use expensive emergency room services for primary care since they may seek care only in emergency situations. Inadequate patient-provider communication negatively impacts medication ...
