Janette Ramirez was looking for a way to help people. In her search, she walked into the Center for Service Learning, Internships & Civic Engagement (SLICE) at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH). Ramirez jumped into multiple SLICE programs and helped empower the local community to overcome social challenges and differences in health, education, and economic opportunities – and she left with a passion for serving others. “That’s how I came to find my love for community service and serving others, because, you know, it’s just really important,” Ramirez said. Today, Ramirez is still seeking to help as many people as she can. As a medical student going into her second year at Midwestern University in Arizona and as a Robert A. Winn Diversity in ...
As a doctor’s son, Daniel Ruben Flores grew up in his family’s pediatric clinic. He and his siblings hammered away at their math and reading homework after school at the clinic, while their parents helped the sick. Flores often paused to admire the handwritten letters – and drawings of his father with a stethoscope – on the wall from patients thanking the pediatrician for caring for them. “Wow, all these other kids really appreciate my dad and all the work he’s doing,” Flores recalled fondly. “I feel like that just kind of motivates you ... to go into the field.” Witnessing his father’s work and the impact he had on his patients helped spark a fire in Flores to pursue medicine and help people, too. He’s taking big steps now – like ...
You can help create a healthier future. Volunteers for registries, research programs, and clinical trials can help researchers learn how to slow, manage, and treat cancer and other diseases. “With improved research participation, researchers have more opportunity to create better prevention and treatments that work for all people,” said Dr. Amelie G. Ramirez, director of Salud America! at the Institute for Health Promotion Research at UT Health San Antonio. Here are seven research opportunities based in San Antonio and beyond to explore this month!
1. Latina Health Reproductive Health Screenings
University of Texas at San Antonio researchers are seeking Hispanic and Latina women between ages 50 and 65 living in San Antonio to comment about their last Pap ...
Latinos with cancer face a challenging survivorship journey. Explore these cancer survivorship challenges at UT Health San Antonio’s webinar, “How to Support Latino Cancer Survivors,” which occurred at 11 a.m. Central on Monday, July 15, 2024. The webinar featured experts from the Mays Cancer Center at UT Health San Antonio, Genentech, as well as cancer survivors and safety-net organizations, who will explore cancer among Latinos and how to help them on the road to recovery. Topics covered patient support, support groups, clinical trials, referrals to resources through screening for non-medical drivers of health, and more. This is a part of a webinar series, “Let’s Improve Health in South Texas and Beyond." The series is a collaboration of the Salud America! ...
It wasn’t too long ago that COVID-19 threw life into chaos.
Businesses shut their doors. Food and supplies ran low. We were separated from our loved ones and trapped indoors. Hospitals dealt with rising demand. Lives were lost.
Years have passed since the pandemic and we’ve tried to distance ourselves from a time when distillers halted production to make hand sanitizer, grocery stores had lanes, and smiles were hidden behind masks.
However, some are still living with a constant reminder of that time.
For those with Long COVID-19, time hasn’t healed the wounds of the past as they still try to recover from the physical, mental, and emotional traumas of the condition.
That’s why Health Confianza — a Bexar County health literacy initiative housed at The University of Texas ...
More than 100,000 people are waiting for a life-changing organ transplant in the US, according to the American Heart Association. The stark reality is that nearly 23% of those on the transplant candidate waiting list are Latino — that’s one out of every five people. In fact, 59% of all transplant candidates on the waiting list are Black, Latino, or Asian. These populations are unevenly affected by chronic diseases, leading to the need for a transplant. In 2023, Latinos received 8,540 of the over 46,000 transplants performed, including 580 hearts, according to the American Heart Association. Despite the number of transplants performed and Latinos on the waiting list, organ donation remains low in the Latino community.
Latino Organ Donorship
While organs ...
In recent years, researchers have made a larger effort to tap into previously overlooked communities, such as communities of color, to create more complete research that benefits everyone. But many people still have deep-rooted mistrust of research. And not all researchers who work with these communities end up bringing the benefits of their research back to boost the health of those communities. The PATIENTS Program at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy is attempting to rewrite the narrative and give researchers, patients, caregivers, and others the tools to provide a continuous patient-centered approach to research. The PATIENTS Professors Academy is a free, virtual training course centered around improving health and the health outcomes of overlooked ...
U.S. Army soldier Tony Rentas, a native of Puerto Rico who dreamed of serving in the military all his life, had a seizure while on a mission in Kosovo. Tony was diagnosed with a low grade glioma, a rare type of brain tumor. He had no idea what a low grade glioma was. So, he started Googling. He found little that helped him understand this diagnosis and what it meant for him and his familia, and even less was available in Spanish. That is why Tony is sharing his story and participating in the International Low Grade Glioma Registry, which hopes to learn more about the best ways to treat these tumors across different groups of people, including members of the Hispanic/Latino community. “One of the biggest things that I wanted to do is help people as much as I can,” Tony ...
Durante su niñez en Puerto Rico, Tony Rentas soñaba con unirse al ejército de Estados Unidos. Quería servir a su país, dar un buen ejemplo a su hijo, y asegurarse que su familia tuviera el cuidado adecuado. En el 2009, se unió al Ejército de los Estados Unidos, haciendo realidad su sueño. Tony ejerció como especialista de inteligencia militar. A lo largo de una docena de años, fue desplegado dos veces, viajó alrededor del mundo, formó grandes amistades, experimentó diferentes culturas, ayudó a personas y proveyó para su familia. Luego, obtuvo una desgarradora noticia. Después de sufrir una convulsión del lóbulo temporal, Tony, -esposo y padre de dos hijos- fue diagnosticado con un glioma de bajo grado, un tipo de tumor cancerígeno en el cerebro, en junio del ...
