Everyone deserves health equity – a fair, just opportunity to be their healthiest.
But the reality of U.S. healthcare is that people of color, including Latinos, face higher risk for life-threatening diseases than their white peers due to systemic inequities in education, housing, food, healthcare, and more.
While these inequities threaten health outcomes, efforts are rising to close the gaps.
Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, along with The Genentech Foundation, has been on the front lines of the health equity crisis, advocating for equitable treatment and representation for the last several years.
This includes the company’s multimillion-dollar Health Equity Innovation Fund.
Launched in 2019, the Health Equity Innovation Fund has given grantees the funds to address key ...
8/22/23 Update: Tim is Salud America!'s latest intern. Read his stories here! 18-year-old Timoteo “Tim” Barrientez wiped a bead of sweat from his brow. It was impossible not to sweat in the hot, humid climate of Port Isabel, Texas – a small coastal town in the Rio Grande Valley. As Tim’s feet struck the pavement, he thought about how he would soon trade his athletic sneakers for military boots. He smiled. After today’s run and weightlifting workout, he would finish packing his bags to begin training as a United States Marine – a career that would last more than 20 years and take him to Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, Japan, and other countries to defend our nation’s freedom. While serving as a Marine, Tim kept his passion for health and fitness close to his heart. ...
Source control keeps germs from spreading by stopping them at their source before they can spread to other people. Source control is an important tool to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and other respiratory infections in the healthcare setting. For COVID-19, source control focuses on covering your nose and mouth with a mask to keep your respiratory droplets out of the air. Masking applies to Latinos and any person with or without symptoms, because anyone infected with SARS-CoV-2 can be asymptomatic. This means they are not showing symptoms and may not be aware that they have the virus. In this case, even if they are asymptomatic, they can still spread the virus to others through respiratory droplets they make when talking, breathing, singing, sneezing, or coughing. “Masks ...
Have you ever wanted to help improve Latino health? Now is your chance! The National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program is recruiting at least one million diverse people to share information about their health history and environment. Information collected for the database helps researchers learn how biology, lifestyle, and our environment affects our health. As part of the effort, participants donate a biospecimen in the form of a blood or saliva sample. Biospecimens can help researchers find new ways to prevent, diagnose, or treat diseases, such as Alzheimer’s or cancer, among Latinos and other groups. “We may study your samples to measure things that naturally occur within our bodies, for example, cholesterol,” according to the All of Us ...
Nurses are lifelines for mothers-to-be, helping recognize complications early during labor and delivery. Maternal health for Latinas could improve even further with a more diverse nurse workforce, according to a new study in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Researchers found that Latinas who gave birth in states with the highest proportion of minority nurses experienced a 31% reduced risk of severe adverse maternal health outcomes, including eclampsia, blood transfusion, hysterectomy, or intensive care unit admission. Why might this be? Researchers believe that if the nurse workforce more closely resembled the diversity of patients, there could be a reduction in provider implicit bias, or subconscious preferences for white patients over those of color. “A ...
As America continues to struggle with COVID-19 variants, a monkeypox outbreak has reached almost every state. Monkeypox – a rare disease caused by infection with the monkeypox virus, which causes similar-but-milder symptoms than smallpox – began appearing in countries where it is not endemic in May 2022. The virus has since spread globally with more than 16,000 cases in over 75 countries. Given the disease’s rapid spread, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared monkeypox a global emergency on July 23, 2022. The Biden Administration declared monkeypox a public health emergency in the U.S. on Aug. 4, 2022. Here’s what you need to know. Update 8/5/22: Monkeypox case numbers from the CDC.
Where is Monkeypox Spreading in the US?
Monkeypox cases have risen to 7,102 ...
Prior to the pandemic (2007-2016), Latinas had a comparable maternal mortality rate to White women, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. However, a new analysis from the University of Maryland and Boston University suggests that Latinas now bear a higher maternal mortality rate compared to white women, a trend not seen in over a decade. The Latina maternal mortality rate rose an alarming 74.2% from 2018-March 2020, when the pandemic began, to April-December 2020, according to the study, published in JAMA Network Open. In comparison, White women’s maternal mortality rate rose just 17.2% during the same time. “For the first time in more than a decade, the maternal mortality rate for Hispanic women during the pandemic was higher than that for non-Hispanic white women, a ...
You’re not imagining it – it is very hot out there. Heat waves swept the nation beginning in early June 2022, putting more than 50 million people under excessive heat warnings and breaking or tying record-high temperatures in more than 25 major cities, according to NPR. For pregnant women, these severely hot temperatures could increase the risk of miscarriage, according to a new study at the Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH). Researchers found that pregnant people in North America had a 44% higher risk of an early miscarriage (within eight weeks of pregnancy) in the summer months, particularly in late August compared to February. This trend was similar during any week of pregnancy, where risk of miscarriage was 31% higher in late August compared to ...
We all know that some viruses make us sick, like norovirus, which causes vomiting and diarrhea; rhinovirus, which causes the common cold; and SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. But how do these viruses make us sick? What happens when a virus gets into the body? Our bodies are made up of billions of microscopic building blocks, called cells. On the outside of our cells, there are tiny parts that stick out. Those tiny parts are made of proteins that act like a lock on a door. If you have the right “key” for the “lock,” then you can get into the cell. Some virus cells can have tiny parts that stick out on their outsides, too. Those tiny parts can work like a “false key” that can fit the “lock” to some types of our bodies’ cells. It’s not an exact ...
