EthnicMajority

(Huffington Post) Latino children are 60% more at risk for asthma than white non-Latino kids. Because I am Latina, I've become even more interested in the topic and what I can do to create awareness.

Even though my 5-year-old daughter was diagnosed with asthma two years ago and I've done my share of research on the topic, I don't consider myself an expert. Thanks to my involvement with the Moms Clean Air Force – a group of moms fighting for clean air, I've learned a lot about how this disease affects Latino children in particular.

We've been lucky that my daughter has never had a full-blown asthma attack and the majority of her problems now stem from colds that usually have to be treated a bit more aggressively so they don't become a more serious ailment.

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(EmaxHealth) One of the more puzzling medical phenomena is the question of why African Americans have a significantly higher incidence of disease and death related to high blood pressure than everyone else in the world. Up till now, research has been devoted to a macroscopic view of diet, exercise, genetics and social factors. Today, however, researchers are publishing data that is the result of looking into the cause of high blood pressure in African Americans with a much more microscopic view at the cellular level. What they found was that there are significant differences between how cells in the blood vessels of African Americans respond to inflammation in comparison to the same type of cells in Caucasians.

Blood Pressure Facts and Numbers

High blood pressure is a major risk factor of heart disease and stroke, which are the first and third leading causes respectively of death in the United States. Approximately 1/3 of the U.S. population has high blood pressure. High blood pressure is typically defined as having a systolic reading of 140 mm Hg and higher or a diastolic reading of 90 mm Hg and higher. One-quarter of the population is pre-hypertensive, meaning that while their blood pressure numbers do not qualify as high enough to meet the criteria of high blood pressure, they are still higher than normal and need to be monitored. People who are pre-hypertensive are usually labeled as “borderline” by their physicians.

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(Newsworks) About six percent of the nation's physicians are African American; while about 13 percent of the population is black. Many experts say that gap hinders health care.

So, does race really matter in medicine? Talk to Thomas Jefferson University oncologist Edith Mitchell and she shares a story from her days as a young fellow.

The patient had breast cancer, and Mitchell recommended an X-ray, then reached for her pad to order the test. The patient said she already had a prescription.

"It turns out she had been in that clinic every July for four consecutive years, and each time she took the slip and put it into her pocketbook and she still had it," she said.

The woman's church considered X-rays harmful to the body. So Mitchell worked with that belief and found an alternative treatment that slowed the woman's cancer. Mitchell is convinced the patient finally felt heard because she's an African American and the patient was too.

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(ThirdAge.com) Regina Benjamin, surgeon general, has announced that she believes many black women do not exercise because they don’t want to mess up their hair.

In attempt to make a point about why African American women have higher rates of obesity than other demographic groups, Benjamin made her announcement at the Bronner Brothers International Hair Show earlier in the month.

"Often times you get women saying, ‘I can't exercise today because I don't want to sweat my hair back or get my hair wet.' When you're starting to exercise, you look for reasons not to, and sometimes the hair is one of those reasons," said Benjamin, as quoted by Jezebel.

The main issue, according to Benjamin, is that many women spend a lot of money on hair products to straighten their unruly hair. Exercising involves fast movement and sweat, both of which can easily undo chemical hair treatments.

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(The Root) National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins said that he was "deeply dismayed" and it was "simply unacceptable" that a study, "Race, Ethnicity, and NIH Research Awards," reported that black NIH-grant applicants were 13 percentage points less likely than whites to get NIH investigator-initiated research funding. Winning such grants is crucial for young scientists who intend to earn tenure at a major research university.

The study, reported in Science magazine, also revealed that despite "controlling for the PhD applicant's educational background, country of origin, training, previous research awards, publication record, and employer characteristics," blacks were still 10 percent less likely than whites to win funding.

The NIH peer-review system supposedly ranks applications based on scientific merit, but the study says that while whites may accrue benefits throughout their careers, "insidious" bias may hold blacks back. Collins co-authored a response stating that the NIH will "assess the presence of hidden bias among reviewers and staff using tests of unconscious racial preferences."

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(CNN) A new study may better explain why African American women have greater risk for developing more aggressive and difficult-to-treat forms of breast cancer, called estrogen and progesterone receptor negative cancers (ER-/PR-). The findings appear in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.

Breast cancer is the second-most common type of cancer among women, after skin cancer. While white women are slightly more likely to get breast cancer than African American women, African American women are more likely to die from breast cancer, according to the American Cancer Society, because they are more likely to develop more aggressive breast cancers. But why this happens has been less clear.

Researchers at Boston University's Slone Epidemiology Center analyzed data from the Black Women's Health Study, which began in 1995 and follows 59,000 African American women who complete health questionnaires every two years.

From 1995 to 2009, 457 women developed estrogen and progesterone receptor positive cancers, ER+/PR+.

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(Examiner.com) The Latino meeting at the Phoenix Public Library this morning revealed that Latinos still overwhelmingly support President Obama’s health-care initiative, despite a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluding that Congress overstepped its authority when lawmakers passed the so-called individual mandate, the first such decision by a federal appeals court.

“Big businesses are complaining that they will have to pay more, but they have the money. It’s the middle and lower class people that are suffering,” said local teacher Maria Fuentes. “I also don’t see a problem with requiring people to pay for health care. They pay into the system anyway and will actually be paying a lot less.”

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(SFGate.com) A coalition of Hispanic advocacy groups said President Barack Obama and Congress have made progress in the past two years on the needs of the nation's largest minority group, but it also warned that proposals for deep spending cuts could put that forward movement at risk.

The National Hispanic Leadership Agenda gave good marks Wednesday to the administration and Congress on early childhood education, health care reform, programs for veterans and Hispanic businesses, and appointments of record numbers of Latinos to the administration.

On immigration reform and enforcement, the coalition of 30 Hispanic groups said in a progress report that Obama and lawmakers "over promised and under delivered."

Several of those gains have required increased spending, such as those included in 2010 appropriations bills to expand Head Start and Early Start by 70,000 in 2010. One in five children under 5 is Hispanic.

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(Huffington Post) The Black Women's Expo, now it's 18th year since it's founding, has become one of the nation's premiere expositions targeting African American female consumers. And drugstore chain Walgreen's decided to tap into the estimated 25,000 guests that attend each year by sponsoring a pavilion at this year's event in Chicago's McCormick Place this weekend.

The company's AARP/Walgreens Wellness Tour bus is offering women free health screenings for cholesterol, blood pressure, bone density, glucose levels, waist circumference and body mass index, flu shots for $10 and a beauty bar showcasing popular cosmetics.

"Reaching women of color is an important health initiative. Nearly two-thirds of all Americans live within three miles of a Walgreens and more than 40 percent of Walgreens stores are located in medically underserved areas,” said Walgreen's Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Cheryl Pegus. She is offering a series of speed-dating style consultations with numerous health professionals to inform, as many women as possible about diabetes, HIV, heart disease and other diseases plaguing the black community to better take care of themselves and their families.

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(EurekAlert) Tobacco related disease is a primary source of mortality for African American men. Recent studies suggest that "alternative" tobacco products may have supplanted cigarettes as the most common products used by young African Americans, according to new research published in the August 2011 issue of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery.

While the tobacco-related disease burden is higher in African American adults, prevalence rates of tobacco use among young African American teens are surprisingly lower than those reported for whites. This picture changes in early adulthood. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health conducted between 2002-2005, 29.7% of white males 18 years of age and older reported smoking cigarettes in the past 30 days as compared to 33.6%% of African American men.

Study results show cigarettes were the most common product ever (54%) and currently (39.9%) used. Participants who attended school for 12 years or attended religious services were less likely to use cigarettes. Marijuana and blunts, mini-cigars, were used next most commonly. Only 35 respondents (8.9%) currently used mini-cigars. Other products, bidis/kreteks, smokeless tobacco, and pipes were used uncommonly in this sample.

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