Education is one of the key social determinants of health. It has been tied to a person’s overall health, long-term financial well-being, and job attainment. Latinos have made great strides in education in recent years, with high-school dropout rates at an all-time low and enrollment in colleges and universities at all-time highs. However, for many Latino families, one barrier that keeps them from obtaining quality education is simply a lack of knowledge of the overall system. In Memphis, TN (6.69% Latino population), a group of parents banded together to help Latino families in keep up with the city’s fast-changing education landscape. They created Spanish-speaking classes as part of the Memphis Lift’s Public Advocate Fellowship. “Our mission is to make the powerless ...
Latinos are the fastest growing racial and ethnic minority population in the country. They are already the largest and youngest and are closing the gaps in several key inequity gaps, including education and health care access. Another important social determinant of health is employment. The ability to find sustainable and equitable employment is key in factoring the long-term health of most individuals. A new report from the financial site WalletHub has helped determine what the “hardest working” cities in the United States are. Using six metric measures, the site compared the 116 largest cities in the country. These measures include “labor-force participation rate,” “average weekly work hours,” and “share of workers with multiple jobs.” In order to ...
Most Americans are still not aware of the many serious health consequences associated with being obese. Additionally, misconceptions about what healthy weight and obesity look like further complicates adults' and parents' ability to correctly identify weight status, thus they are unable to correctly identify their and their children's risk for life-long health complications. According to the Nutrition and Physical Activity Initiative at the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) 2012 report, "obese people are far more likely to develop chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension, asthma, heart disease and cancer. Obese children are more likely to have one or more risk factors for cardiovascular disease, to be prediabetic (i.e., at high risk for developing diabetes), and to suffer from bone ...
The health of the most vulnerable people in the United States is influenced significantly by factors outside of the health care system, or the social determinants of health. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Vulnerable Populations portfolio supports innovative solutions at that intersection of health and social factors—poverty, education, housing, employment, community environments—to give those at greatest risk their best opportunity to live healthy, productive lives. RWJF aims to identify, grow, and rigorously test promising programs and approaches that can create fundamental change in the systems and circumstances that affect vulnerable people. That includes Playworks, which aims to improve the health and well-being of children through safe, meaningful play, and the ...
Dr. Paula Braveman, a health researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, spoke about the importance of social determinants of health on Jan. 27 at the Cancer Therapy and Research Center in San Antonio as part of the new SALSI/CTRC Health Disparities Lecture Series. Braveman's talk highlighted her work measuring, documenting, and understanding socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparities, for a crowd of nearly 100 people. Watch video of her talk here. The SALSI/CTRC Health Disparities Lecture Series, sponsored by the San Antonio Life Sciences Institute (SALSI) and the CTRC, brings some of the top U.S. health disparities experts to San Antonio to offer the latest trends, tools and advancements in the fight against cancer health disparities. The series is a joint ...
