Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, doesn't just celebrate the Latino culture. Did you know Sept. 15 is also the independence day for Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatamala, Honduras, and Nicaragua? And that Mexico's independence day is Sept. 16, and Chile's Sept. 18? These are just a few of the interesting facts about Latinos in a new "By the Numbers" infographic from NBC News. Here are some more tidbits: 17.1% of the United States are Latino
25% of U.S. public school children are Latino
Only Mexico has a larger Latino population than the United States
37 members of Congress are Latino
51% of Hispanics/Latinos don't have a preference being called "Latino" or "Hispanic"
U.S. Latinos have $1.2 trillion in buying power Check out the full ...
What are the best schools for Hispanics to seek higher education? HispanicBusiness ranked the top-40 "Best Schools" based on the number of Hispanic students enrolled, degrees awarded, full-time Hispanic faculty and programs, and more. Of the 40 schools combined, Texas has 12, followed by Florida, with 10, and California, with six. "While these schools are obviously assisted by being in states with a large Hispanic population, they also have top-notch programs that ensure these students stay at home to go to graduate school," HispanicBusiness reports. "Many of them placed very high in the student-services part of our scoring." The ranking includes the top-10 in four school categories: graduate, medical, law, and business. Here are the top schools by category: ...
Cancer recently passed heart disease as the top killer of Latinos. But heart disease shouldn't be ignored. Culturally appropriate health promotion, prevention and treatment is vital to saving lives and preserving Latino families, said Dr. Eduardo Sanchez, chief medical officer for the American Heart Association, in a Huffington Post article. The article lists several reasons for concern: Preschool-age Hispanic children are four times more likely to be obese compared to non-Hispanic white children. These children are more likely to develop heart disease and diabetes as young adults.
Hispanic youths have higher smoking rates—28 percent of Hispanic eighth graders smoke compared to 23.7 percent of non-Hispanic white children. Smoking is the number one preventable cause ...
For the first time ever, U.S. public schools are projected this fall to have more minority students than white students enrolled, a shift largely fueled by growth in the number of Hispanic children, the Associated Press reports. White students are still most populous, but their numbers dipped just below 50% for the first time. Here is the racial/ethnic breakdown of students, according to National Center for Education Statistics: 49.8% White
25% Hispanic
15% Black
5% Asian
5% Other "The shift creates new academic realities, such as the need for more English language instruction, and cultural ones, meaning changes in school lunch menus in the Southwest and elsewhere to include tortillas and other offerings to reflect students’ tastes," according to the Associated ...
Delinquent youth face a significantly increased risk for a violent death when they're adults, a new study finds, HealthDay reports. This finding is especially true for delinquent Hispanics, teens, and girls. The study, published online in the journal Pediatrics, found that the rate of violent death among delinquent Hispanic females and males were nine and five times higher, respectively, than in the general population. "Our findings are shocking," study author Linda Teplin, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University, said in a university news release, HealthDay reports. "Death rates in our sample of delinquent youth, ages 15 to 19, are nearly twice those of troops in combat in wartime Iraq and Afghanistan." "Early violent death is a health ...
Despite slow improvements in the quality of care overall, access is worsening and health care disparities, particularly for minorities and groups with lower socioeconomic status, have seen little to no improvement, according to a new report. The report, the 11th annual National Healthcare Disparities Report, is conducted annually by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), found that, compared with whites, racial/ethnic minorities receive worse care across 25-40% of quality measures. Poor and low-income people receive worse care than individuals with high income for about 60% of quality measures. These disparities are even more pronounced for measures of health care access, and among particular racial/ethnic groups. Hispanics had worse access to care than Whites ...
About 23% of U.S. public school students are Hispanic, but only 8% of teachers are Hispanic, too, according to new studies, Fox News Latino reports via the Associated Press. Overall, 48% of public school students are minorities, but less than 20% of teachers are minorities. This is a so-called "diversity gap" and more should be done to help teachers more accurately mirror the students in their classrooms, according to the study developers, the Center for American Progress and the National Education Association. According to the article:
Teachers are always pushing their students to excel, said Kevin Gilbert, coordinator of teacher leadership and special projects for the Clinton Public School District in Clinton, Mississippi.
It becomes easier for students to believe "when ...
The driver of Latino population growth has shifted from immigration to U.S. native-born births. In fact, the number of Latino immigrants in the U.S. reached a record 18.8 million in 2010, but has since stalled, while U.S. births alone accounted for 60% of Hispanic population growth, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. The share of foreign-born Hispanic was 35.5% in 2012, down from 40% earlier in the 2000s. The reason for the decline? The Pew report says:
The slowdown in growth of the Hispanic foreign-born population coincides with a decline in Mexican migration to the U.S. Today, about as many people from Mexico are leaving the U.S. as entering, after four decades of explosive growth (Passel, Cohn and Gonzalez-Barrera, 2012). Many factors have ...
Hispanics suffer higher rates of certain cancers, including cervical cancer and childhood leukemia, than other groups. That is one of the reasons behind Lifelines, a series of cancer education articles, videos and audio files from the National Cancer Institute’s Multicultural Media Outreach (MMO) program. The Lifelines series, in both English and Spanish, addresses cancer prevention, treatment, survivorship, health disparities, clinical trials and other cancer-related topics for African-American, Hispanic, Asian American and Pacific Islander and Native American populations. Lifelines Videos feature videos on a wide range of topics, including colorectal, breast, and cervical cancer, tobacco use and lung cancer, complementary and alternative medicine, and nutrition and cancer ...
