We know secondhand smoke is deadly. We also know that, inside places like apartments, people are exposed to secondhand smoke as it travels through doorways, halls, windows, ventilation systems, and electrical outlets. So what if we could cut secondhand smoke exposure in the home? Well, after a national media campaign to reduce cigarette smoking in homes in Scotland, hospital admissions of under-five-year-old children dropped 25%, according to a recent study in Lancet Public Health. "Our findings suggest that smoke-free home interventions could be an important tool to reduce asthma admissions in young children, and that smoke-free public space legislation might improve child health for many years, especially in the most deprived communities," according to the ...
Toxic stress is endangering the current and future health of our society. Amid the mental, physical, and economic toll of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is even greater need to prevent the risk factors for toxic stress, which are severe, intense, or prolonged stress, trauma, or adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) like physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. The new Roadmap for Resilience: The California Surgeon General’s Report on Adverse Childhood Experiences, Toxic Stress, and Health is the nation’s first guide to address toxic stress by cutting ACEs in half in a generation. We at Salud America! are exploring the roadmap in an 11-part series. This is the final post in the series, with five upstream ways you can take action to address toxic stress. “To enable ...
Smoking and COVID-19 can each kill. And when you compound one's effect on the other, the harm is clearly evident. Amid a pandemic that has killed about 100,000 Latinos, there has been a significant drop in the number of people who are attempting to quit smoking using services provided by healthcare organizations, according to a recent report from the North American Quitline Consortium (NAQC). This is alarming considering the dangers of smoking amid the current coronavirus infecting people across the nation, according to Dr. Susan Walley, a tobacco control expert and professor at University of Alabama at Birmingham. “Smokers are at a higher risk for greater complications such as death, admission to intensive care and mechanical ventilation when they contract COVID-19,” she ...
Secondhand smoke damages people’s health every day, including those who live in or occupy places that allow smoking. In Horizon City—a suburb outside of El Paso, one of the cities with the state’s highest Latino population (% Latino)—local leaders just banned smoking in public spaces and businesses. The ban aims to ensure that all who live in the Texas suburb can live without having to breathe in smoke, according to Eva Olivas, the community impact director for the American Heart Association of El Paso and a Horizon City resident. “When people live and work in a smoke-free environment, they can literally breathe easier because they aren’t being exposed to the diseases and risks that come from secondhand smoke,” she told the El Paso Herald-Post. “Far too many ...
Latinos at risk of a stroke do not receive adequate treatment and support despite being aware of their risk factors, according to a new study published in Stroke, an American Heart Association journal. “It’s a wake-up call for the medical community. Despite our best efforts, Hispanic and Latino populations still seem to be undertreated for their vascular risk factors,” said Dr. Fernando D. Testai, co-author of the study, according to McKnight’s Long-Term Care News. “I didn’t expect the numbers to be so dismal.” Researchers suspect that lack of access to healthcare and not having health insurance are the main contributors to Latinos being undertreated for strokes, indicating that inequitable resources can have a detrimental impact on Latino health.
What Did the Stroke ...
In the fight to end smoking, mass media efforts to change social norms have led to historic declines in smoking. But the tobacco industry isn't giving up. These companies aggressively market flashy, new electronic and flavored products in hopes of growing the market among youth and young adults. Still, these individuals are not so easily swayed. Young people overwhelmingly distrust the tobacco industry, especially Latinos and other youth of color, according to a recent report from The Truth Initiative. "The good news is that the public is as distrustful as ever of the tobacco and vaping industry, despite their extensive public relations and marketing strategies. For now," according to the Truth Initiative website.
Wins and Losses in Public Health Leaders' Efforts to Curb ...
Toxic stress is brought about by repeated stressful and traumatic experiences with no supportive relationships. This is causing huge mental and physical health problems for people across the nation, including Latinos and other people of color. Dr. Nadine Burke Harris even calls toxic stress a public health crisis. This is why she authored the Roadmap for Resilience: The California Surgeon General’s Report on Adverse Childhood Experiences, Toxic Stress, and Health. “We now understand that a key mechanism by which ACEs [adverse childhood experiences, such as divorce, abuse, poverty, etc.] lead to increased health risks is through a health condition called the toxic stress response,” Burke Harris’ roadmap states. Salud America! is exploring this issue as part of its ...
More and more Californians are working toward a tobaccoless future. In the city of Crescent City, Calif., residents will no longer be able to smoke in multi-unit housing. A new ordinance, recently passed by the City Council, aims to reduce the harmful toxins non-smokers face when facing secondhand smoke inside their apartments or condos. The city joins a list of over 60 other California cities with similar policies. Secondhand smoke is linked to cancer and heart disease. There is even data to suggest that some forms of exposure are more harmful than other, such as sidestream exposure — a mix of mainstream smoke, the smoke exhaled out by a smoker, and sidestream smoke from the burning tobacco product. “[Sidestream] smoke has higher concentrations of cancer-causing agents ...
As 2020 comes to an end, let’s take a look at health this year. In a year defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, parents have several concerns about the health and safety of their children. Overuse of social media/screen time (72%), bullying/cyberbullying (62%), and Internet safety (62%) were parents top overall concerns, according to the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health 2020. The survey asked a national sample of Latino, Black, and white parents to rate the top health concerns for U.S. children ages 0-18. “Overall, 8 of the Top 10 concerns most commonly rated by all parents as a ‘big problem’ are frequently associated with changes in lifestyle and may be related to efforts to control the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to the survey ...
