From mental health to education and preparing children for adulthood, moms and dads have a lot to think about with how they parent. In fact, 40% of parents with children younger than 18 say they are extremely or very worried that their children might struggle with anxiety or depression at some point, according to the new Parenting in America Today report from the Pew Research Center. Parents worries stem from the rise of a youth mental health crisis and the compounding stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, which deeply impacted Latinos. Let’s explore the full report on parenting and how it impacts Latinos!
The Top Parental Concern
Mental health is the top concern for parents, according to the Pew report. That worry is felt “more acutely” by Latino parents. “42% of ...
While many US restaurants removed sugary drink options from kid’s menus in recent years, 44% of the top 200 chains still offered soda or other sugary drinks, according to a recent study from the Center For Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). Sugary drinks contribute added sugars in a child’s diet, which can then contribute to obesity. Yet sugary drinks were the most common children’s beverages offered at the top 200 restaurant chains in 2019 and 2021, the report found. “It’s time for all restaurants to drop children’s sugary drinks. To complement industry efforts, states and localities should pass legislation that requires restaurants to make healthier beverages the default kids’ drink offering,” according to CSPI. “Healthier children’s meals, served with ...
Researchers are exploring a genetic variant that could explain the higher rates of Alzheimer’s among Latinos living in Puerto Rico. This work – which is ongoing – could help fill a critical gap in Latino Alzheimer’s research and spark new treatments for dementia, according to researchers at the John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics at the University of Miami. “A genetic target, which drug companies are showing interest in, is twice as likely to be successful therapeutically than nongenetic targets,” Margaret Pericak-Vance, leader of the Hussman Institute, told NBC News. Let’s dive into the research and how it impacts Latinos!
The Need for Genetic Research on Alzheimer’s among Latinos
Latinos are 1.5 times more likely than their peers to have ...
The rise of COVID-19 worsened daily life for Latinos and many others in areas like healthcare, housing, income, and food access. Stress and anxiety are other grim outcomes of the pandemic, especially for youth. Following COVID-19-fueled school shutdowns and social isolation, adolescents experienced more symptoms of anxiety and depression and greater internalizing problems than before the pandemic, according to a new study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). The brains of teens and young adults were also deeply impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. “In addition to replicating prior findings that the COVID-19 pandemic adversely affected adolescents’ mental health, this study showed that the pandemic may have physically aged their brains,” according to ...
When COVID-19 first struck America in 2020, Latinos were deeply affected. Not only did the pandemic create high rates of infection, hospitalization, and death among Latinos, it also worsened historical health inequities, from access to healthcare and vaccinations to food insecurity, housing issues, and misinformation. Today, as new variants continue to arise, an unresolved threat has emerged – Long COVID. Let’s analyze the lingering symptoms of Long COVID-19 and how it impacts Latinos today.
What is Long COVID?
The Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC, and other partners have worked to define “long COVID” or “post-COVID conditions.” “In April 2020, shortly after the beginning of the pandemic, anecdotal reports from patients started to emerge that ...
As more healthcare systems start to screen patients for social determinants of health (SDoH), we at Salud America! at UT Health San Antonio are spotlighting why screening for SDoH is so important to improve health outcomes, especially among Latinos. Today, we are sharing three SDoH screening tools that can help address social needs, or the non-medical barriers to health, of Latinos and all patients. You can use these screening tools – questionnaires that gather information from patients – in your healthcare facility or use them as inspiration to create your own screening tool. Let’s dive into these health-changing tools!
The Protocol for Responding to and Assessing Patients’ Assets, Risks, and Experiences (PRAPARE®)
PRAPARE® helps health centers and other providers ...
If you’re age 75 or older, you should know about PREVENTABLE. PREVENTABLE – the Pragmatic Evaluation of events And Benefits of Lipid-lowering – is a clinical trial to help researchers understand if taking a statin, a drug commonly used to lower cholesterol in younger adults, is helpful for older adults, specifically when it comes to maintaining health by preventing dementia, disability, and heart disease. “We really don’t know how these drugs work in older adults,” according to the research team at UT Health San Antonio, including Dr. Sara Espinoza, principal investigator for the local study site. “Most, if not all, of the studies of statins have been done in much younger people, in their 50s and 60s, but studies in adults over 75 are rare.” The national study is ...
The CDC recently revised Body Mass Index (BMI) charts for children to help healthcare providers better track growth in children and identify “severe obesity.” Before the update, BMI charts for children did not go above 37. The revised charts extend to a BMI of 60 to account for the rise of severe obesity in children ages 2-20, according to the CDC. Now clinicians can more easily see whether a child’s BMI falls within the range of underweight, ideal weight, overweight, obese, or severely obese, based on a percentile measured against other children of the same age and gender, according to CNBC and healthline.com. A BMI higher than 95% of kids of the same age and gender is defined as obese. Severe obesity is a BMI 120% higher than the 95th percentile, ...
Since late 2020, the Collaborative for Anti-Racism and Equity (CARE) , including Salud America!, has worked to promote racial equity and declare racism a public health crisis. Part of CARE’s work is providing resources for government entities and organizations to tackle health and racial inequities in their communities. Now, CEO Action for Racial Equity, a member of the collaborative, has created a Racial Equity Implementation Framework to help these same audiences advance and sustain their racial equity efforts.
What’s Included in the Racial Equity Implementation Framework?
To create the framework, CEO Action for Racial Equity analyzed over 200 declarations of racism as a public health crisis and several existing racial equity toolkits. The Network for Public Health Law, ...
