"I didn’t know eating McDonald’s every day would hurt my triglyceride levels." Sadly, this is something Bertha Hidalgo heard when she talked to friends and family about heart disease. Simply put, many women had no idea. Not just about the details of Bertha's studies, such as a recent American Heart Association (AHA) report she helped author about disparities in treatment of heart disease and stroke. They didn’t even understand many of the basics about awareness, prevention, and treatment. “Their lack of certainty with some of these health topics means we’re not doing a good enough job as scientists and physicians to get the message out to the people who need it," Bertha told American Heart Association News. For example, do you know the answer to these ...
Did you know Latino kids are twice as likely to die from asthma than their peers? More than 1 in 10 U.S. Latino kids have been told they have asthma. These kids struggle with this incurable lung disease that causes recurring periods of wheezing, chest tightness, coughing, shortness of breath, and can result in missed days of school or emotional and physical stress. Why is this? Poverty plays a big role, but it's more than that, said Genny Carrillo of Texas A&M, who studies the disease. "Possibly due to more limited access to health insurance and health care providers and higher presence of environmental triggers such as pollution, dust and mold," Carrillo said. There is good news. A person with asthma can live and sleep without interruptions with proper ...
Amherst, Mass., is a 73% white city. But with an emerging Latino population that includes about 1 in 5 Spanish-speaking families with kids in public schools, city leaders are ramping up to meet Latino needs, MassLive.com reports. They're even setting aside $54,000 to create a Latino community food program. "When we look at food access (it) is a real issue," Julie Federman, the city's health director, told MassLive.com. "Getting to a grocery store, getting to an affordable grocery store can be really challenging." U.S. Latinos face a big lack of access to support for economic stability, wellness, and education. Latino children often fall behind in school, and social and physical development, according to a Salud America! research review. Latinos especially lack access to ...
McDonald’s is removing cheeseburgers, shrinking French fry portions, and making chocolate milk less sugary in U.S. Happy Meals, in an effort to make its children's food more healthy, Reuters reports. The food company, first the first time, will set global limits for calories, sodium, saturated fat and added sugar in Happy Meals. The new standards will be implemented by June 2018. This is certainly a positive step. But it also begs the question: Can a Happy Meal really ever be healthy? This is an especially important question for Latino families. They tend to live in neighborhoods where fast food restaurants far outrank options for health food, according to a Salud America! research review. "Taken together, the changes do not transform burgers or chicken nuggets into ...
Latino families are often lack economic support and healthcare they need, which jeopardizes their kids' academic, social, and physical development, according to Salud America! research. But two San Antonio organizations may have the solution. Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas is giving $175,000 to HASA—the health information exchange for San Antonio and other parts of the state—to expand their services by adding socioeconomic factors like housing, access to healthy food, and more social issues to patient's medical records, according to the San Antonio Business Journal. What does that mean? It means that healthcare providers will get a better look at a patients' health history, including clinical, social and behavioral risk. This will arm doctors with ...
Oregon's high-school graduation rate was shockingly low—72%—just a few years ago. But after the state hired its first ever "education innovation officer" and schools started finding unique ways to help Latino students graduate on time, the graduation rate rose 77% in 2017. "We try to remove barriers on the pathways students want to follow to make it as equitable as possible," Martha Guise, principal of Century High in Hillsboro, where the overall graduation rate soared partly due to improvements for Latinos, told the Oregononian. "We are getting better."
Latinos and the Graduation Quandary
The good news is that Latino high-school graduation rates reached an all-time high of 77.8% in the United States in 2015, buoyed by federal programs like the Every Student Succeeds Act, ...
Do you get enough sleep? If not, your lack of shut-eye could be harming your health. In fact, for Latinos, lack of sleep contributes to heart attacks, obesity, and other big health issues. That’s where the “Los trastornos del sueño y la promoción del sueño saludable” (the sleep disorders and the promotion of a healthy sleep) program comes in. Los trastornos del sueño trains community health workers, called promotores, to teach people about the importance of sleep. The program's 600 promotores—300 in the U.S. and 300 in Mexico—teams up with nurses and clinicians to deliver bilingual and culturally relevant education to improve sleep habits. This helps reduce health care needs for sleep apnea, insomnia, and restless legs syndrome. Now they've won an ...
Childcare centers are serving healthier food and pushing more physical activity than they did five years ago. But it's less clear that these changes are promoting health equity for Latinos and other minority children, according to a new report. The report, Early Care and Education Policies and Programs to Support Healthy Eating and Physical Activity: Best Practices and Changes Over Time, reviews policy and system changes in food service, physical activity, and screen time in early care and education (ECE) settings from 2011 to 2016. ECE settings include childcare centers, day care homes, Head Start programs, and preschools. The report was led by Healthy Eating Research. "The early childhood years are critical to the prevention of obesity," according to the report. "The role of ...
"Know Your Role." "Know Your Rights." These are the two key phrases being taught to Oregon Latino immigrants in new free workshops, which offer bilingual help on interacting with police and understanding one’s rights whether they are documented or undocumented. The workshops, led by the Rural Organizing Project in Oregon (11% Latino), help Latinos integrate in the community and build resiliency. "Oregon has become our home, and as such, we need to learn how to protect it, starting with ourselves and our own families," according to a blog post by Jessica Campbell of the organization. "Let’s not allow fear to break us! We are resilient people that made the heartbreaking choice of leaving our home countries behind, searching for opportunities to rebuild ourselves and our ...
