According to a recent research review, the Safe Routes to School program has been successful in increasing the proportion of students that walk and bike to school. The Safe Routes to Schools (SRTS) program provides education, encouragement and road improvements to create safe conditions to increase rates of walking and biking. This is particularly important for low-income populations who tend to experience greater rates of obesity and pedestrian injury and tend to live in areas with poor walking conditions. Participating schools were more likely to be in high-density areas. These areas found fewer rates of child pedestrian injuries and increased rates of walking and biking compared to areas that did not participate in SRTS. Additionally, rates of walking and biking increased over ...
Hispanic children who participated in a unique weight-maintenance pilot intervention were more likely to adopt healthy lifestyles, resulting in healthier weights, than children who didn’t participate, according to a UT Health San Antonio study in the June 2015 issue of the journal Childhood Obesity. The pilot study, which paved the way for a new $2.9 million grant to test the intervention on a larger scale through 2019, was implemented with parent-child pairs in a rural clinic in New Braunfels, Texas. Children who participated were Hispanic, ages 5-14, and obese/overweight. “Comprehensive behavioral programs have been shown to help these children improve their weight status. However, more efficient interventions that can be done in primary care clinics must be developed for ...
Breast cancer patients given information about clinical trials in multiple ways, including a tailored video on breast cancer clinical trials, had much greater awareness of trials than patients who got usual-care information, according to new data. After receiving the extra information—an interactive video about clinical trials, a bilingual booklet, and access to a patient navigator who can help answer their questions—the proportion of Latina breast cancer patients taking steps toward participating in a clinical trial increased from 38% to 75%, according to the study. The study was led by researchers from the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at UT Health San Antonio and presented at an American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) conference Nov. 9-12, 2014, in ...
Dr. Amelie G. Ramirez, director of the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at the Health Science Center, the team behind SaludToday, was awarded a $1.4 million grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. She was among several researchers were among those awarded $7.6 million to prevent cancer this week. Ramirez will develop bilingual, relevant social and mobile messages and channels to recruit young adult smokers to sign up for a text-message-based tobacco cessation service. “Smoking is a problem among young adults in South Texas, but there are no relevant programs that utilize heavy usage of social media and texting to help them quit," Ramirez said. “If our project goes as planned, it will increase young adults’ use of tobacco cessation ...
Some men are less likely to get screened for colorectal cancer and more likely to be diagnosed at harder-to-treat stages. That’s why Dr. Cynthia Mojica, a researcher at the Institute for Health Promotion Research at UT Health San Antonio, is creating tailored and language-relevant print-based tool to persuade men to get colorectal cancer screening. Mojica’s efforts are fueled by a new grant from the Health Science Center’s Mentored Research Career Development (KL2) Program in Clinical and Translational Science. “The grant award will give me training, mentorship and research support to help me bring the community into the research process to help create a tool that can change their behavior and lead them to get screened,” Mojica said. As part of the award, Mojica ...
A new obesity management program will use family counseling, text messages and newsletters to control weight and spark healthier eating and physical activity habits in obese/overweight kids, thanks to a five-year $2.9 million federal grant awarded to researchers at the UT Health San Antonio. Researchers will develop and test the six-month program among 230 child-parent pairs in three pediatric clinics of the University Health System. Half the child-parent pairs will get in-clinic counseling on how to make healthy changes. The other half will get the same in-clinic counseling—plus phone counseling and culturally tailored text messages and newsletters to reinforce changes suggested through counseling. “We believe kids in the more intensive group will significantly ...
Yoga can help cancer survivors get active and improve their current and future health. That's the idea behind a new $500 mini-grant for the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at UT Health San Antonio to start a yoga therapy program for Support Lending for Emotional Well-Being (SLEW), a non-profit wellness center for women who have been diagnosed with cancer. The grant, from the Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics at the UT Health San Antonio, will allow the team to develop an “Exercise for Cancer Survivors” educational presentation and a yoga program/curriculum that will gradually introduce participants to yoga and be sustainable for SLEW to continuing using upon the grant’s end. The project leader at the IHPR is Rose A. Treviño-Whitaker and the project ...
Salud America! today released six Spanish-language animated videos that shed light on the causes of solutions to childhood obesity. The videos, which are also available in English, explore the latest research into how six critical topics—marketing, school snacks, sugary drinks, neighborhood food environments, active play and access to active spaces—impact child health. The videos also feature evidence-based recommendations on how to address the problem. The child-narrated videos are part of a six new packages of research materials produced by Salud America!, a national research network on childhood obesity that is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Each topic’s package contains: a research review, an assessment of all available scientific evidence on ...
Diabetes and obesity are the two most significant health threats in South Texas, according to a new report published online in Springer Open Books by the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) in the School of Medicine at UT Health San Antonio. The South Texas Health Status Review, originally self-published in 2008, was updated this year to study more than 35 health conditions and risk factors and how people in South Texas are affected compared to those in the rest of Texas or nation. The Review, in addition to singling out diabetes and obesity, also indicates that the South Texas region faces higher rates than the rest of Texas or nation for: Cervical, liver, stomach and gallbladder cancers
Child and adolescent leukemia
Neural tube defects
Other birth ...
