In light of traffic deaths, traffic jams, and pollution, many U.S. cities are working to make their streets safer. However, street improvements often occur in white, wealthy neighborhoods. This does little to help the people most impacted by disparities in mobility and air quality—low-income people, Latinos and other minorities, and people older than 65. How can we tell if street projects are benefiting everyone equitably? Fortunately, the National Complete Streets Coalition of Smart Growth America grades "Complete Streets" projects—where streets are designed for drivers, transit users, people walking, and people biking, regardless of age or ability—and publishes a Best Complete Streets Policies Report. But they haven't updated their 100-point grading system since ...
The Witte Museum's H-E-B Body Adventure exhibit has made a positive health impact on more than 500,000 children and adults in San Antonio (68% Latino) since its launch in 2014, according to a new report by museum officials. "It's really a safe haven to encourage the community to find out and explore that physical activity, healthy eating and rest and relaxation are fun," Dr. Bryan Bayles, the museum's curator of anthropology and health, told KSAT-TV. The exhibit, now in its third year, works like this, according to the Rivard Report: The H-E-B Body Adventure is a modular interactive, electronic, hands-on experience for both children and adults that involves activities like working off the calories of a soda on a step machine, dissecting the human body at a simulated autopsy ...
Imagine you're 4 years old. How would you feel going to preschool with crocodiles, elephants, and butterflies? What about learning letters while on nature walks? That childhood fantasy is reality for kids at the Will Smith Zoo School in San Antonio (68% Latino). The Zoo School, which opened in 2004 and became licensed in 2014 at the San Antonio Zoo, will expand its capacity from about 50 to more than 200 students in 2018 and become the largest nature-based preschool in the nation, SA Current reports. Zoo officials believe that learning can be as much of a serious hands-on experience as it is messy fun. "Children will spend time in nature exploring and discovering the wonders of nature," according to the Zoo School Parent Handbook. "Basic preschool concepts will be ...
The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) currently provides health coverage for over 9 million U.S. children. For Latinos, CHIP has been especially beneficial; in 2015, 92.5% of all U.S. Latino kids were covered in large part due to CHIP. But CHIP expired on Sept. 30, 2017. It has hung in the balance since. Fortunately, Congress has made a stopgap measure to allow CHIP to continue. The House of Representatives and later the Senate attached a rule change as part of Congress’ continuing resolution to keep the government running through Dec. 22, which allows for the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) to continue to give reserve CHIP funds to the states that needed it most, Bloomberg reports. A report from Bloomberg noted that California (38.39% Latino) has ...
Students do better academically and socially with parents who are active in their schooling. However, low-income Latino parents have historically scored lower in reading to children, helping with homework, volunteering at school events, and parent-teacher communication, according to a recent research review by Salud America! That is why one Georgia middle school started a free, bilingual 12-class program to help Latino parents become school leaders!
Georgia Steps Up for Latino Parents
Latinos face many barriers to school engagement, such as language barriers, work schedules, poverty, and social discomfort. Many Latinos also believe in the concept of educación—parents teach moral education, schools teach academic education. Bottom line, when it comes to their children's ...
Florida (24% Latino) is home to the nation's largest free preschool program. How did they get it? The long and winding story started 70 years ago and called for epic action—like enabling people to tax themselves for the sake of children, and local residents bypassing state legislators and petitioning for a public vote for universal Pre-K as a Florida Constitutional amendment. By the end, Florida had a model that other states can follow to get free Pre-K in their state.
The Need for Greater Access to Preschool
Latino and all children who attend high-quality early childhood programs are better prepared for kindergarten and overall school success than children who do not attend such programs. However, Latino kids and families across the country face many barriers to access ...
Eighth-grade students in Kansas City, Kan. (29.3% Latino), are conducting neighborhood audits around their middle school to see how friendly the area is for kids and families to walk. Latino kids often lack safe places to walk and play. They are less physically active than their peers and face higher rates of obesity and chronic disease. Safer routes would enable families to choose walking, thus improving children's their physical activity and health, research shows.
Why Walking Audits?
Walking audits are one way to assess factors that help or hinder safe routes for children to walk. Audits typically focus on a specific site, like a school or park, or a specific street or corridor. Audits account for things like sidewalk width and condition, street lighting, distance between ...
Nap clubs. Quiet rooms. Wellness centers with cozy couches and tea. Schools are trying new ways to give rest to sleepy students, including Latinos who are more sleep-deprived than their peers. That includes high-tech "nap pods" for students in two high schools in Las Cruces (59.6% Latino) and two in Sunland Park (95.2% Latino), N.M. Students sit in the pods, available in the nurse's office, under a sensory-reduction dome that plays relaxing music and soothing lights for 20 minutes before gently vibrating to wake the students.
"[It is] great for kids who weren’t getting enough sleep at night—which teenagers don’t, for a variety of reasons," Sandy Peugh, health services director for the Las Cruces school district, told Las Cruces Sun-News.
"They were coming to school ...
For the first time in decades, overall tobacco use increased among high school students. This could have a big impact on Latino health. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among Latino men and the second-leading cause among Latino women. The Tobacco 21 Coalition is trying to raise the legal minimum age for cigarette purchase to 21 in San Antonio, Texas (68% Latino). Every year in Texas, 75,000 kids try smoking for the first time and 12,300 kids become regular smokers. In San Antonio, 12.6% of male high school students and 9.9% of female high school students currently smoke. These youth are more sensitive to nicotine's addictiveness because their bodies are still growing and developing, according to health experts. Thus, these youth are more likely to smoke as ...
