There is no secret that the United States overall has an obesity problem. According to a new report from the financial website WalletHub, the cost for America’s fight with obesity costs nearly $316 billion per year in medical bills. More than a third of U.S. adults are obese (36.5%), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Obesity in children and adolescents between the ages 2 of 19 sits at 17%. For Latinos, the problem is at an epidemic level. Nearly 40% of Latino children are overweight or obese (higher rates than both white and black children), placing a significant burden on the current and future state of Latino health. According to WalletHub, more than 70 percent of Americans (age 15 and older) are overweight or obese. In order to reduce health ...
As Latinos continue to grow as a population (they are currently the nation’s largest racial and ethnic minority group), the focus on increasing educational opportunities for them has become a front burner topic on the agenda of many organizations. In Modesto, Calif. (37.54% Latino population), one local institution has taken an innovative approach to not only increase Latino enrollment, but also to ensure that they succeed once they begin. Modesto Junior College recently completed its Hispanic Education Conference in which hundreds of local students were “exposed to higher education” through a series of workshops and motivational speakers. Increasing Latino students’ exposure to higher education outlets has been identified as a key way to eliminating some barriers that they ...
Promotores de salud have long been recognized as being able to break down barriers that keep many Latinos from obtaining quality, accessible health care. Often members of the community in which they do outreach, promotores are able to foster trust with the Latino population they serve. In San Luis Obispo, Calif. (16.36% Latino population), the Promotores Collaborative looks to have moved the area’s Latino community onto the “fast track” of being able to access the city’s health resources. The group is an emerging prevention and health education organization that works in the community through neighbor-to-neighbor outreach. Created by the nonprofit Center for Family Strengthening, the Promotores Collaborative recruits, organizes, and trains networks of Spanish-speaking ...
Access is one of the main reasons many Latinos do not continue their education beyond high school. The lack of access to resources and information –especially financial literacy—keeps many Latino students from going to college. A new program in Pico Rivera, Calif. (90.63% Latino population), is looking to remove some of these barriers. Heberto M. Sanchez, President and founder of the nonprofit Latino Educational Fund (LEF), and Principal Jonathan Lyons of El Rancho High School in Pico Rivera have agreed to launch the Student Loan Board Program, a “forward thinking pilot program” aimed at advancing the financial literacy for their students. “This is a unique opportunity for our students to learn about how lending works through the LEF’s hands-on Student Loan Board ...
In recent years, Latinos have made great strides in achievement in education. Latino high school dropout rates are at an all-time low and more and more Latinos are enrolling in two- and four-year colleges and universities. In Sheldon, IA (5.99% Latino population), a new program has been launched to help the community’s Latinos excel even more in school. The Iowa State University Extension and Outreach and Northwest Iowa Community College are excited to offer local Latino families with the opportunity to take part in what’s being called “Juntos para una mejor educación” (Together for a Better Education). According to radio station KIWA, extension officials have described the program as a series of activities for middle school students and their families with the goal ...
An article published by the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine has outlined the overall impact that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has had on healthcare access for Latinos. In the U.S. Latinos have traditionally faced inequities and disparities in access to healthcare compared to Whites. With the passing of the ACA, Americans overall made historic gains in reducing the rates of the uninsured population. Latinos especially reached record lows in the number of uninsured individuals. According to the study, despite the historic gains, Latinos perform worse on most measures of access to and utilization of their health care than Whites. The reasons for these disparities are multifaceted and include citizenship status, language, and socioeconomic status. In order to ...
Latinos are the largest and fastest growing racial and ethnic group in the United States. Despite gains made with the passing of the Affordable Care Act, Latinos are also still the largest uninsured population in the country. One of the major ways that many Latinos have attained healthcare has been through Medicare. Currently, Medicare provides health coverage for most Americans when they reach age 65 or have been receiving Social Security disability benefits for 24 months. The service covers a portion of the health care costs of over 55 million Americans, including approximately 4.1 million Latinos. Recently, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released an updated guide that outlines what Medicare doesn’t cover. In order to reduce health disparities, ...
Latinos have been making great strides in education in recent years. The high school dropout rate is the lowest in history and more and more are attending two- and four-year colleges and universities. As the Latino population continues to grow, it can be expected that these trends will continue to grow more positively. At Eastern Shore Community College in Melfa, VA (2.3% Latino population), those effects have already been felt. Despite lagging overall attendance figures for the institution, Latino numbers have grown to historic numbers. The community college is now moving toward becoming a minority-serving institution, which is a designation awarded to colleges and universities in which white students make up less than 50% of the total enrollment. In order to reduce health ...
Determining the best way to reach Latinos has always been one of the biggest questions that health care workers always ask. Language barriers, trust issues, and cultural differences are just some of the barriers that often create inequities for many Latinos. At Mercer University in Macon, GA (3.14% Latino population), students launched a community health fair aimed at reaching Latinos in an effort to alleviate some of the lingering health concerns of the community. “Since the Hispanic population is growing a lot, we need more representation, more people that can help because that affects the whole community,” said Dr. Jose Pino, a professor of foreign languages and literature at Mercer University in an interview with WMAZ. “In some institutions they don't have bilingual ...
