We’re all busy with the hustle and bustle of life. It’s tempting to grab fast food or buy ready-to-eat food to avoid cooking after a long day. But choosing those ultra-processed foods may cost you more than the money in your wallet. We already know that processed food is bad for your health, but an August 2022 study in The BMJ suggests that consuming ultra-processed food may increase risk for a serious disease – colorectal cancer. Let’s unpack these study results and what they mean for Latinos.
What Are Ultra-Processed Foods?
Ultra-processed foods – industrial ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat formulations made of little or no whole foods – now contribute 57% of total daily calories consumed by American adults, according to the study. These foods are usually rich ...
US food and beverage companies disproportionately target Black and Latino consumers with advertising for high-calorie, low-nutrient products, including candy, sugary drinks, and snacks, according to a new study by the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Health at the University of Connecticut. This targeted advertising has been a problem for years and is consistent with findings from other studies and reports, including the recent US Access to Nutrition Index 2022. The millions of dollars companies spend on targeted marketing contributes to inequities in diet-related diseases in communities of color, including heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. “Companies express how much they respect the culture and concerns of Black and Hispanic communities, but at the same time, they appear ...
The US has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed countries, and 84% of those pregnancy-related deaths are preventable, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). These shocking statistics can be difficult to digest, especially since the US spends more on healthcare per capita than other industrialized nations. What is causing these preventable deaths? And how are Latinas impacted? Let’s unpack the report’s findings and implications.
What is a Preventable Pregnancy-Related Death?
A pregnancy-related death is a fatality that occurs during pregnancy, delivery, and up to a year postpartum due to a pregnancy complication, a chain of events initiated by pregnancy, or the aggravation of an unrelated condition caused by the ...
HPV-associated throat cancer is on the rise in men. With the typical patient being 50 to 60 years old, Black and Latino men are dying from the disease at higher rates than their white counterparts, regardless of the stage of diagnosis or the type of treatment they receive. These staggering statistics come from a 2022 study published in the Annals of Cancer Epidemiology. Here’s what you need to know about HPV-associated throat cancer, and what you can do to help prevent it.
What Causes HPV-Associated Throat Cancer?
HPV is short for human papillomavirus and is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. There are many types of HPVs, some of which can cause cancer later in life, according to ...
Clinical trials can help researchers learn to better treat asthma – but they need diverse volunteers. Black and Latino children who have severe asthma, are prone to asthma attacks, and live in low-income urban neighborhoods are underrepresented in asthma treatment clinical trials, even though they are more likely than whites to face health inequities that can exacerbate asthma symptoms. Fortunately, a recent National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded clinical trial with mostly Black and Latino children found that a monoclonal antibody – mepolizumab – can decrease asthma attacks by 27%. Antibodies are made naturally in the body to fight infection. A monoclonal antibody is made in the laboratory and administered to patients to treat a variety of diseases and infections, ...
Prior to the pandemic (2007-2016), Latinas had a comparable maternal mortality rate to White women, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. However, a new analysis from the University of Maryland and Boston University suggests that Latinas now bear a higher maternal mortality rate compared to white women, a trend not seen in over a decade. The Latina maternal mortality rate rose an alarming 74.2% from 2018-March 2020, when the pandemic began, to April-December 2020, according to the study, published in JAMA Network Open. In comparison, White women’s maternal mortality rate rose just 17.2% during the same time. “For the first time in more than a decade, the maternal mortality rate for Hispanic women during the pandemic was higher than that for non-Hispanic white women, a ...
You’re not imagining it – it is very hot out there. Heat waves swept the nation beginning in early June 2022, putting more than 50 million people under excessive heat warnings and breaking or tying record-high temperatures in more than 25 major cities, according to NPR. For pregnant women, these severely hot temperatures could increase the risk of miscarriage, according to a new study at the Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH). Researchers found that pregnant people in North America had a 44% higher risk of an early miscarriage (within eight weeks of pregnancy) in the summer months, particularly in late August compared to February. This trend was similar during any week of pregnancy, where risk of miscarriage was 31% higher in late August compared to ...
Have you ever wondered how where you live affects your life expectancy? Now you can find out thanks to the first comprehensive, US county-level life expectancy estimates. The analysis, published in Lancet by researchers at the University of Washington and others, estimates life expectancy for five racial/ethnic groups, including Latinos, in 3,110 US counties over 20 years (2000-2019). Let’s explore what the study found about Latino life.
What Is Latino Life Expectancy?
Nationally, the study revealed that life expectancy for Latinos increased an average of 2.7 years – from 79.5 years in 2000 to 82.2 years in 2019 – during the 20-year study period. This increase in life expectancy was larger than average (2.3 years) and the highest life expectancy nationally and across ...
COVID-19 vaccination is often deterred by misinformation, from conspiracy theories to exaggerated side effects on social media. Vaccine misinformation is potent among Latinos due to lack of reliable information that is culturally relevant or in Spanish, along with little government outreach. That is why UT Health San Antonio researchers studied a new type of advertisement on Facebook to push people to get vaccinated. They used video testimonial ads of Latino peer role models, like Rosa Herrera, who tout the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine, while providing psychological inoculation by acknowledging misinformation, rejecting it, and receiving the vaccine. Compared to generic vaccine promotion ads from the CDC, the Latino peer model ads yielded a significantly higher rate of ...
