Latinas tend to have positive attitudes and strong interest in genetic testing for breast cancer risk, yet lacked general knowledge about testing, its risks and benefits, according to a new study led by researchers at the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, the team behind SaludToday. The study, published recently in the journal Community Medicine & Health Education, conducted focus groups with 58 Latinas in Hidalgo County, a largely Latino part of South Texas. Researchers used analyzed focus group responses and themes and uncovered several cultural factors, such as religious beliefs, that impacted Latinas’ decisions to get genetic testing. “Key Latino values—religiosity, importance of family and the influential ...
Liver cancer rates among South Texas Latinos are higher than in other U.S. Latinos, as are their rates of obesity and diabetes—and the relationships between these ailments are being mapped by researchers at the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at The UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, the team behind SaludToday. In a study published April 18, 2012, in the journal PLoS ONE, the researchers looked at overall liver cancer rates among U.S. Latinos and compared this to a Texas sample and a South Texas subset from 1995-2006. They also compared prevalence among Latinos of lifestyle-associated factors that contribute to liver cancer: heavy alcohol use, smoking, obesity and diabetes. They found that from 1995 to 2006, annual age-adjusted liver cancer incidence ...
Do encouraging, personalized messages, received on a regular basis, inspire women to exercise after they’ve been treated for breast cancer? To find out, the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio is enrolling Hispanic survivors of breast cancer for a 16-week clinical research exercise study conducted in South Texas' Lower Rio Grande Valley to address this topic. Changed thinking that leads to self-confidence leads to changed behavior—that’s the idea behind the study. The study requires two visits to the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio's Regional Academic Health Center campus in Harlingen to answer questionnaires, do a complete physical fitness assessment and develop each woman’s individualized comprehensive ...
Find the latest in Latino health—from fighting Latina cervical cancer to innovative ways to tackle Latino childhood obesity—in the new E-newsletter from the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at The UT Health Science Center at San Antonio. The IHPR E-newsletter has these stories: Story and Video: Preventing Cervical Cancer in South Texas (Pg 1)
Story: How an “Exercise Avoider” Became an “Exercise Promoter” (Pg 2)
Story: The Importance of Latino Biospecimens (Pg 2)
Story: 20 Studies Tackle Latino Childhood Obesity (Pg 3)
Story: Who is Promotora of the Year? (Pg 4)
Videos: “Feeding Minds” Series Addresses Hunger, Obesity in Texas (Pg 6) The E-newsletter is jam-packed with even more info on the latest local and national health ...
Increasing rates of obesity and diabetes may be contributing to a steep rise in liver cancer, or hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), among Latinos in the U.S., particularly in Texas. Overall U.S. HCC rates grew from 1.7 cases to 5 cases per 100,000 from 1980 to 2005, and reached 7.5 cases per 100,000 among Latinos, according to data presented at a recent American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) conference by Dr. Amelie Ramirez, director of the Institute for Health Promotion Research at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, the team behind SaludToday. Dr. Ramirez and her colleagues also found that Latinos accounted for about 33% of HCC cases in Texas and 75% of cases in South Texas, while also documenting corresponding increases in the prevalence of obesity ...
In the late 1980s, Dora Alicia Gonzalez helped do one of the first assessments of socioeconomics and health care locations in her native Brownsville, Texas. She even helped write a 300-page report—page by page—on a typewriter. Gonzalez said the experience, even despite its arduous typing task, sparked her interest in public health and improving the lives of the underserved. Over the last 20 years she has helped meet the needs of uninsured residents as part of a primary health care agency, and also fostered community-based partnerships and developed and implemented cancer education training sessions along the Texas-Mexico border for the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Today, Gonzalez builds community health as a program coordinator at the Institute for Health Promotion Research ...
Hispanics, who make up 60 percent of Bexar County’s population and almost 40 percent of Texas’, face special cancer risks.
Minimizing those risks is the subject of a free public lecture to be held at 6 p.m. CST Thursday, Aug. 11, 2011, on the fourth floor of the Grossman Building at the Cancer Therapy & Research Center of The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, 7979 Wurzbach Road.
"In the Hispanic population, we tend to put off prevention because we don't think it's going to happen to us," said Dr. Amelie Ramirez, director of the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at the UT Health Science Center. "And cancer's one of those things we don't like to talk about."
For instance, Dr. Ramirez said, about 40 percent of Hispanic women do not have yearly ...
Dr. Deborah Parra-Medina, a professor at the Institute for Health Promotion Research at The UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, is leading a new project to teach Latina moms and daughters in South Texas about the HPV and cervical cancer, which disproportionately affects Latinas. Conexión, a publication of the San Antonio Express-News, has more:
A new program called Entre Mujeres from the Cancer Therapy & Research Center at the UT Health Science center will allow mothers and daughters, ages 11-17, in the lower Rio Grande Valley to come together in a unique setting to educate themselves on HPV and its prevention.
Entre Mujeres will combine community health workers, or “promotoras,” and college students from UT Pan American's Kappa Delta Chi sorority to present educational ...
Congrats to Dr. Deborah Parra-Medina! The researcher at our Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR), the team behind SaludToday, is one of two researchers at The UT Health Science Center at San Antonio to get a grant in the new round of prevention research awards from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. Dr. Parra-Medina will receive $297,173 for a peer education and outreach program encouraging use of the HPV vaccine to prevent cervical cancer among Latina mothers and daughters living in Texas-Mexico border communities. The program will train “promotoras,” or community health workers, who will be assisted by female college students to educate Latina mothers and daughters about cervical cancer risk factors and the HPV vaccine, which prevents cervical ...
