In recent years, Latinos have made great strides in achievement in education. Latino high school dropout rates are at an all-time low and more and more Latinos are enrolling in two- and four-year colleges and universities. In Sheldon, IA (5.99% Latino population), a new program has been launched to help the community’s Latinos excel even more in school. The Iowa State University Extension and Outreach and Northwest Iowa Community College are excited to offer local Latino families with the opportunity to take part in what’s being called “Juntos para una mejor educación” (Together for a Better Education). According to radio station KIWA, extension officials have described the program as a series of activities for middle school students and their families with the goal ...
The San Antonio Mayor’s Fitness Council (MFC) Student Ambassador Program is looking for the next group of kids to make their school or community healthier. Not only does San Antonio face high rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, but residents face disparities in chronic disease by income, education, and racial and ethnic groups. For example 15% of Latino have diabetes compared to 12% of Non-Latino whites, and 24% of people with an annual income below $25,000 have diabetes compared to 8% of those with an annual income greater than $50,000. It is critical for projects, programs, and policies in San Antonio to address structural and systemic inequity that leads to these disparities. "Now in its fifth year, the Mayor’s Fitness Council trains student ambassadors to ...
In Vinton County, Ohio a new grocery store is helping to provide access to fresh fruits and vegetables, where there once was a food desert, with little to no access to healthy foods, only processed foods. "We have to take people shopping because there's no place to shop. To pick up an average client in Vinton County were going to have to average at least 20 miles round trip and it can go up as high as 60 round trip," explained director of Vinton County Senior Services to You're the Cure GRA. Many advocates worked hard to help bring new grocery stores into the state including a new $2million dollar budget that included seed capital to create a Healthy Food Financing Initiative signed by Ohio Governor John Kaisich in June 2016. The new grocery store broke ground on Monday, March ...
Latinos have been making great strides in education in recent years. The high school dropout rate is the lowest in history and more and more are attending two- and four-year colleges and universities. As the Latino population continues to grow, it can be expected that these trends will continue to grow more positively. At Eastern Shore Community College in Melfa, VA (2.3% Latino population), those effects have already been felt. Despite lagging overall attendance figures for the institution, Latino numbers have grown to historic numbers. The community college is now moving toward becoming a minority-serving institution, which is a designation awarded to colleges and universities in which white students make up less than 50% of the total enrollment. In order to reduce health ...
Determining the best way to reach Latinos has always been one of the biggest questions that health care workers always ask. Language barriers, trust issues, and cultural differences are just some of the barriers that often create inequities for many Latinos. At Mercer University in Macon, GA (3.14% Latino population), students launched a community health fair aimed at reaching Latinos in an effort to alleviate some of the lingering health concerns of the community. “Since the Hispanic population is growing a lot, we need more representation, more people that can help because that affects the whole community,” said Dr. Jose Pino, a professor of foreign languages and literature at Mercer University in an interview with WMAZ. “In some institutions they don't have bilingual ...
For many Latinos, discussing mental health issues still retains a strong, negative stigma. Often times, a lack of access to mental health care resources means conditions go either untreated or undiagnosed. Language barriers also prevent many from expressing their symptoms and/or concerns to their doctors. In the city of Fresno, Calif. (48.54% Latino population), one group is looking to help remove some of these barriers. The Consejo Project, part of the Department of Social Work Education at California State University, Fresno (Fresno State), trains social work students to serve Spanish-speaking children, teenagers, and youths and examine and work through the systemic barriers that limit the access of Latinos to mental and substance abuse services in the San Joaquin Valley. “We ...
Colorado health leaders have a new answer to help Latinos overcome barriers to proper healthcare, like language, cultural stigmas, and a lack of access... ...a chat series. The new Community Hearth Health Actions for Latinos at Risk (CHARLAR) program, which originated in Denver (30.94%) before coming to Steamboat Springs (8.3% Latino population), arms Latinos with personal health knowledge they may not otherwise have. “Many Latinos have poor dietary and health habits,” said Erick Ocampo, a community connector for Northwest Colorado Health that is running the program, in an interview with Steamboat Today. “Overeating, not exercising, and not getting help for health issues until the issues are very serious … In our culture, we don’t really care.” In the summer of ...
Gardens in schools are now becoming commonplace, as more and more schools see the benefits that gardens bring. Having a garden on campus not only opens up students learning to plant healthy foods but also encourages students to learn how to use science and math in gardens and may be used towards creating healthy eating environments in some cases. Rush Springs High School is now taking advantage of what used to be a storage room and transforming into an Aeroponic Tower Garden space. The class that goes with the garden is an entrepreneurial S.T.E.M class, teaching students not only how to grow healthy foods, but also allowing students to use food grown as a fundraiser to pay for more class projects, S.T.E.M teacher Larry Lance explained to local ABC News. Lance first came up ...
Congratulation to California, where an ordinance passed last night in the city of Perris (71% Latino) requires restaurant's kids' meals to no longer serve sugary drinks as part of the default option of the meal. Now parents and kids can see the healthy choice as the easy choice when dining out. Families can still order sugary beverages for their kids, but as the American Heart Association warns, just one soda exceeds the limit for sugars for a whole day for teens and kids. One can of regular soda contains nearly 10 teaspoons of sugar and 140 calories. Policies that promote healthier beverages are important for many kids in the United States who consume at least one sugary beverage a day.
In fact, most two-thirds of children in the United States consumed at least one sugary ...
