Keylynne Matos-Cunningham is a force to be reckoned with. The eldest of three younger siblings and a blend of Northern, Southern, African-American and Puerto Rican cultures, Matos-Cunningham stands up and speaks out against injustices experienced by underrepresented minorities. Matos-Cunningham graduated with her master’s degree of public health from Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University (ECU). Her research interests are mental health, minority health, sexual health and social determinants of health. She works full-time in substance abuse prevention and is an adjunct health instructor at ECU. There are many things that move her and drive her closer to her purpose. She believes that being a servant of the community is how to best understand the world. To ...
Joe Padilla saw both sides of the coin growing up. His grandmother’s love led her to feed passersby. His uncle never accepted success, and pushed him to do more and more. The result was a goal-driven, yet compassionate person who has a huge head start on his goal of busting cultural barriers and improving the health of Latino men. Padilla earned his bachelor’s degree in kinesiology from the University of Texas at El Paso, and is currently pursuing his master’s degree in public health with a concentration in community health education at New Mexico State University (NMSU). He is a graduate research assistant for the NMSU’S Cancer Outreach Program. He helps with program evaluation of the Culturally Adapted Colorectal Cancer Educational Program for Hispanics. He hopes to ...
Nicole Serrant Ayes is always up for a challenge. In fact, she’s already proven this by taking the challenging trek up Machu Picchu. Serrant Ayes also spent two years as a biologist and a research assistant at a Veteran’s Affairs Hospital collaborating in different cancer projects. With two grandfathers who survived prostate cancer, she is now determined to help others at risk, by improving access to services. She is currently finishing up her master’s degree of public health in epidemiology at the University of Puerto Rico-Medical Sciences Campus. To further her experience and education, Serrant Ayes applied for the Éxito! Latino Cancer Research Leadership Training program. The Éxito! program, led by Dr. Amelie G. Ramirez at UT Health San Antonio with support from ...
Ileana Cepeda, a former rugby player, cares about tackling health disparities from many angles, the same type of caring she learned from her abuelita. Cepeda serves as a research associate for the JUNTOS Against Cancer initiative at the University of Kansas Cancer Center and JUNTOS Center for Advancing Latino Health. She is also part of the new Health Equity Steering Committee for the Cancer Center. Additionally, she supports the PeRson EmPowered Asthma Relief (PREPARE) Study at the American Academy of Family Physicians as the bilingual research associate. Cepeda received her master’s degree of public health from Kansas State University in 2017 and her bachelor’s degree in biology from Newman University- Kansas Catholic College in 2015. To further her experience and ...
On the heels of a likely second-straight year of declining healthcare enrollment, a Texas judge has ruled that core elements of Obamacare are unconstitutional and make the entire law invalid, CNN reports. The ruling is expected to be appealed, which could take months. It won't affect 2019 insurance plans. But legal experts say the ruling does cast doubts about the future of health coverage for millions of Americans via Obamacare exchanges (the Affordable Care Act) and in Medicaid expansion. If Obamacare went away, between 61 and 133 million people with some type of pre-existing health condition would lose coverage. As a result, they would be forced to pay much higher insurance premiums, and would be subject to a longer waiting period. Meanwhile, around four million Latinos ...
Andrea Cruz, raised in Los Angeles but now living in a Midwest U.S. city where she only knows a few Latinos, keeps a rosary to remind her of her culture and her family. Now she’s doing an excellent job representing Latinos by studying the sciences and actively learning how to apply that knowledge to public health issues like the correlation between environmental pollutants and cancer in women. Cruz recently graduated from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with a master’s degree in toxicology. She studied the mechanism in which phthalates can cause neural tube defects in rodent models and looked for correlations between copy number alterations and DNA methylation in colon cancer tissue. To further her experience and education, Cruz applied for the Éxito! Latino Cancer ...
We're hiring! Apply now for a "digital content curator" position with our communication team at Salud America!, our national Latino health equity organization based at the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at UT Health San Antonio. This position involves using content curation to write, edit, and communicate health content and messages. Activities include: establish and maintain relationships with key partners/stakeholders/organizations
mine internal and external media/online resources to identify, collect, organize, write, edit, and schedule various digital and multimedia content types to promote on Salud America!’s online, social, and email platforms.
Participate in other projects of the IHPR as directed, including: writing and editing technical ...
Fatima Frausto’s parents came from Zacatecas and worked very hard to give her a better future and instill in her a love for learning. This foundation helped propel her to excel in school while learning about public health. Frausto attended UT Austin where she found her calling in conducting research about reproductive health and the Latinx experience. She is now working on her master’s degree of public health in health promotion and behavioral sciences at the UT Health Science Center at Houston School of Public Health. She has personally seen and experienced health inequities. This is something she intends to address in her future research. To further her experience and education, Frausto applied for the Éxito! Latino Cancer Research Leadership Training program. The ...
The Farm Bill cleared the U.S. House on a 369–47 vote after passing the Senate with a vote of 87–13, and cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are not included, according to the Food Research & Action Center. Past versions of the bill had contained a $20 billion cut of SNAP over 10 years. “The negotiators appear to have achieved a bipartisan compromise that maintains and modestly strengthens SNAP, ensuring that millions of struggling Americans will continue to be able to count on SNAP to help them put food on the table,” Robert Greenstein, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told the Washington Post. This is great news for Latinos and all. SNAP is proven to: Lifts millions of people out of poverty and helps them stay ...
