Salud America! network members submitted 62 public comments urging the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) to prioritize safety and wellbeing on state transportation projects. In August 2018, we asked people to submit public comments to TxDOT to shape transportation planning and spending across the state for the next 10 years, in what is known as the Unified Transportation Program (UTP). The UTP guides construction, development, and related activities for 13,000 projects. But some say it prioritizes traffic congestion relief over safety and connectivity. Salud America! filed an open records request with TxDOT and discovered 30% of all comments TxDOT got on the UTP were from Salud America! members! That’s 62 of 211 total comments, and a big jump from the 27 comments ...
The first group of participants in the San Antonio’s full-day public preschool program performed better on state standardized tests than others in public preschools and those who didn’t attend preschool, according to a new study, San Antonio Express-News reports. Voters approved Pre-K 4 SA in 2012. In 2018, the first group of Pre-K 4 SA students reached third grade, when the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) exam is first given. How do Pre-K 4 SA students (76.3% Latino) compare statewide? Over 11 percentage points higher on reading scores and over 15 percentage points higher on math scores than students who didn’t participate in public pre-K, according to the report by University of Texas San Antonio (UTSA) Urban Education Institute! Pre-K 4 ...
Roberto Clemente Middle School shut its doors in 1994 and sat empty for more than 10 years years in Philadelphia's Hunting Park, a predominantly Latino neighborhood. Not anymore. Local faith-based nonprofit Esperanza has turned the former school into 38 affordable housing units, which opened November 2018, Plan Philly reports. The site also has 5,000 square feet of commercial space. “It will now once again become a community asset, providing quality, affordable housing to Hunting Park residents,” said David Ortiz, Esperanza’s vice president of housing and economic development. But the school-turned-affordable-housing project is just one part of Esperanza's neighborhood revitalization plans.
Esperanza's Revitalization of Hunting Park
Hunting Park has higher poverty ...
Struggling with behavioral or mental health issues? If you're in the Rio Grande Valley (~90% Latino), there is a phone number you can call to get help. The Hope Family Health Center in McAllen, Texas has launched a new service: A Peer Run Warm Line. This resource is for those in the community who are experiencing depression, anxiety, stress, loneliness, or any other non-crisis, non-emergency ailment to their everyday living. The Warm Line launched on January 21, 2019. "There may be somebody that will be going through a crisis or close to a crisis and need somebody to talk to and [they're] isolated and don’t want to call the hospital for help or don’t have the resource," Rebecca Stocker, leader of Hope Family Health Center in McAllen, told The Monitor. "They can ...
Water and milk are now the "default beverage" on kid's menus in California, thanks to a new law that experts say is a public health win against the devastating effects of sugary drinks. The Healthy-By-Default Kids’ Meal Beverages Act, which went into effect Jan. 1, 2019, makes California (39.1% Latino) the first state to require water or milk as the beverage automatically offered with kids’ meals at restaurants, according to Voices For Healthy Kids. The change also bans the display of sugary drinks on kid's menus and ads.
A Win For California Parents
The new law is the first of its kind. Bipartisan legislators and health advocates supported the law, including Public Health Advocates, a Voices For Healthy Kids grantee. Latino Coalition for a Healthy California also showed ...
Affordable housing is hard to find after home prices surged 25% in the past five years in San Antonio (64% Latino), the San Antonio Express-News reports. About 165,000 people in San Antonio are "overburdened" with housing expenses. They spend more than 30% of their income on rent, mortgage payments, and other costs associated with housing, such as electricity, according to The Rivard Report. This is a threat to a city expected to grow by a million people in the next 20 years. “Just like water, energy and transportation policy, we have to make investments in housing in order to spur inclusive development that delivers prosperity for our entire community," San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg. How is the city tackling housing?
San Antonio OKs Policy Framework, Funding for ...
Earlier in 2018, over 700 Salud America! members and thousands of others submitted public comments to oppose the USDA's proposed measure that could weaken nutrition standards in schools. Unfortunately, USDA approved its measure. The new rules aim to give schools flexibility in achieving higher nutritional standards for milk, whole grains, and sodium, according to a USDA press release. Unfortunately, experts say that really means: Schools in the national school lunch and breakfast programs will be allowed to serve flavored, low-fat milk, which is prohibited under existing standards.
The requirement for the portion of grains that must qualify as whole-grain-rich will be relaxed.
There will be a delay to meeting sodium reduction requirements, even though 9 out of ...
Michael Anderson is quite unhappy with Portland’s plans for $168 million worth of parking garages for “park-and-ride” users of its future 12-mile rail corridor. Anderson, an urban policy writer and analyst at the social justice nonprofit Sightline Institute, says garages are expensive, serve only a few transit riders, and drain money from more beneficial projects. He suggests three more efficient ways to spend the money while boosting transit ridership: mixed-income homes near transit
bike infrastructure
better bus and rail service. Anderson also encourages people in Portland Metro to advocate for these alternatives and speak up against the parking garage plans, and join local advocacy groups, like Portlanders for Parking Reform, Portland for Everyone, and ...
One traffic death is too many. That’s why Florida (25.6% Latino) has become the first U.S. state to adopt a goal of zero traffic and pedestrian deaths each year. The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) even established safety performance targets to align with its “Driving Down Fatalities” vision for a fatality-free transportation system. Read how they did it below in Part 3 of Salud America!’s three-part series on transportation changes in Florida. Part 1 examined Florida’s reinvention of Complete Streets. Part 2 examined the potential for public transit integration.
New Traffic Safety Targets
State departments of transportation (DOTs) and Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) get money for transportation projects from multiple sources. Each source has ...
