When Julia Maues was 29, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy who had a full head of hair—while she had no hair at all due to chemotherapy for breast cancer. During her pregnancy, she was diagnosed with HER2-positive breast cancer. Maues began chemo while pregnant, which is the standard of care. After her son was born in 2013, she underwent more tests she couldn’t have while pregnant. Doctors found that her cancer had already spread to her brain, liver, and bones. After trying different drugs and finding the right one, the cancer started to respond to the therapy. There were (and still are) many setbacks: Most drugs don’t penetrate the brain, many drugs harm the heart, the side effects can be debilitating, and her incurable illness has taken a huge emotional toll on ...
Police Chief Darren Gault believes kids deserve more support in avoiding risky behaviors. Gault knows when police officers interact positively with kids inside schools and out, they help kids stay in school and stay away from crime in Moline, Ill. (16.8% Latino). But officers already have so many unfunded mandates on their time. That is why Gault was so excited when he learned about the low-burden, no-cost “Handle With Care” program, which provides positive interactions for kids who experience traumatic events. Gault shared the program with Rachel Savage, superintendent of Moline-Coal Valley School District. Together, Gault and Savage—with help from a Salud America! Action Pack—are launching the Handle With Care.
People in Moline Face Stress, Violence
Gault and ...
Amanda Merck isn’t only a content curator for Salud America! at UT Health San Antonio, a member of many health committees, and an urban planning student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is also a fighter for equitable transportation, equitable access to parks, and an advocate for children who experience trauma. Merck is a poster child for civic engagement for health equity─and she is dedicating her time and career to help countless others become civically engaged, too.
Merck: ‘Never Any Talk about Civic Engagement’
Merck grew up in many different places including California, Texas, and Montana. As the daughter of a low-income, high-school dropout, working was meant to pay the bills. “There was never any talk about civic engagement nor ...
Bill Hayward learned a disturbing truth when he ventured into the crawlspace underneath his home. For a year, he, his wife Adriana, and other members of their family experienced consistent migraines, mood swings, extreme fatigue, flu-like symptoms, and a host of other health problems — with no root-cause explanation. They sought help from experts and professionals alike to no avail. Using a last-ditch, do-it-yourself test, Bill discovered their home itself was full of mold and that it was responsible for their symptoms. "It's terrifying and heartbreaking," Adriana said. "I felt really hopeless; the medical profession not really knowing what to do with it and dismissing it. It was just a very dark and sad time for our family." Mold and other environmental factors can lead ...
They say a picture can illustrate what at times words cannot. That is what drove Jayme Hannay to lead a decade-long project that encouraged teen empowerment, advocacy, and healthy change in New Britain, Connecticut — Photovoice. Hannay and her team teach local teens about photography, but for an ethical cause: Showcase how the local environment contributes to health issues, and spur solutions. With core support from the Healthy Tomorrows Partnership for Children Program and a research grant from Salud America!, they launched the Healthy Tomorrows for Teens project. “Photovoice can expedite policy change because it makes community members co-researchers in assessing their environment and allows for rapid translation of their findings into action," said Hannay, a project ...
As a white woman living in Boston who grew up all around the world, privileged and well-educated, Alison Corcoran was a stranger to injustice and health inequity. “I’ve never been denied anything,” Corcoran told Salud America!. That all changed 11 years ago when she became a foster parent to her African American son.
Experiencing Health Inequity and Bias First-Hand
When Corcoran’s son joined the family, he was only in the first grade. During the family transition meetings, his social worker had told her: “Make sure you take him to the dentist soon – I don’t think he has ever gone.” So Corcoran took him to the family dentist for a cleaning and exam. During the appointment, it was no surprise that her son had multiple cavities. Then, it came time to visit ...
Fred Dock knows that, as cities grow, managing transportation gets tougher. Dock, who headed up transportation for Pasadena, Calif. (34.4% Latino), also knows many cities overly focus on reducing automobile congestion and boosting speed, thus neglect walking, biking, and transit. Two things happen in these cities. Roads become dangerous for people walking and biking, and people are forced to depend on automobiles—the dirtiest, least efficient, and most expensive mode of travel. Dock wanted to help Pasadena out of this trap. Pasadena city leaders hoped to create an integrated, multimodal transportation system with choices and accessibility for everyone. But they wouldn’t achieve this vision using current auto-centric road metrics—that’s when Dock stepped up to ...
In training, doctors and other healthcare providers are taught to disregard their own personal upbringings, and that of their patients, from clinical decisions. But doctors are susceptible to their unconscious bias. Dr. Jabraan Pasha is changing that. Pasha created a workshop to spread awareness of implicit bias─the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions unconsciously─in the healthcare system. “The workshop aims to make us realize we are not bad people because of [implicit bias],” Pasha said. “We have these biases that are there. Agree or not they are there, and this can help people take steps to correct it.” “It’s important to remove shame and guilt.”
Pasha’s Discovery of Implicit Bias
Pasha, a native of Tulsa, ...
What is the motivation behind your day job? For Kelly Capatosto, it is her family and the Latino population. Capatosto, who started exploring implicit racial bias in school discipline at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University, wanted to help her family and make them proud. At the same time, she is making a huge impact on health equity for her community. Capatosto and the Kirwan Institute are generating significant research and training on implicit bias—the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions unconsciously. Implicit bias has a big impact on Latino health equity. "When we got the funding to start working this implicit bias training, we were also living in a different world than it is today," ...
