Growing up around the borders of Mexico, New Mexico, and Texas, Crystal Costa was immersed in Mexican culture. She experienced good, like the red chili peppers for traditional meals. She experienced bad, like seeing how doctors didn’t explain health issues to her mother. Costa’s experience drove her keen interest in working with underserved populations and building capacity among community leaders to improve public health, especially when it comes to environmental justice and health advocacy. Today Costa is working on her master’s degree in public health at the University of Texas at El Paso. She also works with an interdisciplinary research team and provides support to pregnant and postpartum women recovering from substance use disorder and trauma. To further her ...
Schools can serve as so much more than space for children to learn. They can even transform community health. That is, if schools share their spaces with the public when classes are out. Fortunately, the team at ChangeLab Solutions is showing how easy and beneficial it is for schools to share use of school grounds with local residents and groups after and before school, and during summer.
What Is Shared Use of Schools?
Playing can help a kid’s healthy brain development. But many communities are not kid-play-friendly. Latino neighborhoods tend to lack safe places that welcome kids and multi-generational families to play. Many schools lock up their facilities after class ends. Shared use agreements—also called open use or joint use—are specific plans and rules that ...
Mexico holds a special place in Marissa Jauregui’s heart. Jauregui has taught English to students in Yucatan as a Fulbright scholar, and she grew up traveling to visit her grandparents. Now she is keeping her roots in mind as a first-year student in the Community Oriented Public Health Practice program at the University of Washington, Seattle. She already is focusing on mental health, reproductive health, health disparities, and health policy. She has strong leadership qualities and desires to conduct research and advocate for mental health services outside of the clinic. To further her experience and education, Jauregui applied for the Éxito! Latino Cancer Research Leadership Training program. The Éxito! program, led by Dr. Amelie G. Ramirez at UT Health San Antonio ...
Volunteering for Christmas and New Year's helps other people and is proven to give the volunteer an emotional boost, too. So why not volunteer your "voice"? Speak up with these six actions to promote health equity for Latino and all families this holiday season!
1. Start ‘Handle With Care’ So Police Alert Schools if Kids Are Exposed to Trauma!
60% of U.S. children have been exposed to violence, crime, or abuse. These kids still have to go to class. They carry a burden of trauma that can interfere with their behavior and grades. And schools don’t know there’s an issue at home. Enter “Handle With Care.” Download the free Salud America! “Handle With Care Action Pack” to start a Handle With Care program. In the program, police notify schools when they ...
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 ...
Like the bright velas (candles) her grandmother lit as a sign of her strong Catholic faith, Stacy Cantu-Pawlik is shining as a researcher and advocate for Latino health equity. Cantu-Pawlik is a senior research area specialist at the Institute of Health Promotion at UT Health San Antonio, where she serves as a digital content curator for the Salud America! program. She creates content that promotes healthy change, such as stories about mental health heroes and campaigns to improve healthcare. Read Cantu-Pawlik’s stories! Cantu-Pawlik, who earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, focused graduate research on environmental factors and elevated cancer incidence in South Texas. Her experiences growing up in the Rio ...
People with wealth often enjoy good health. People who live in poverty often suffer worse health. This income inequity is simple on the surface. But it has layers of complexity that unfold differently for different people, especially Latinos who face large wage gaps and health issues and warrants action from across sectors to promote health equity. Here is a deep dive into income inequity and Latino health. Why Do Wealth Gaps & Income Inequity Occur? The reasons for wealth gaps are complex. Systemic under-investment is a contributing factor, some experts say. "The 'neo-materialist' hypothesis suggests there is systematic under-investment in social infrastructure and services in more unequal societies," writes Sharon Friel for The Conversation. "Social ...
In 2006, Dr. Susan E. Pacheco experienced a stark paradigm-shift due to an inconvenient truth. She learned that the Earth—and those who inhabit it—could experience destruction and devastation at the hands of climate change. Once Pacheco gained that understanding, she says the only thing left to do was to act. “It’s just the knowledge,” Pacheco said. “Just knowing that this is happening and that medical students, residents, and doctors don’t have the benefit of that knowledge. I have to do something. I just can’t sit and keep this knowledge to myself. “That’s why I’ve been so engaged in educational activities that have to do with climate education because it cannot be ignored.”
Introduction to Helping others Through Healthcare
Pacheco is one of the few ...
