Every Day is Magic: Ada Limón
In her 2015 collection, Bright Dead Things, a National Book Award finalist for poetry, Ada Limón writes of moving to Kentucky: “Confession: I did not want to live here.” It’s perhaps not a surprising sentiment coming from a coastally oriented person who was raised in Northern California, attended college in Seattle, and then spent over a decade in New York City.
But Limón and her husband, Lucas, have been in Lexington for seven years now and the effects of settling into this place are noticeable in her new book, The Carrying (Milkweed, Aug.). It’s a phenomenally lively and attentive collection replete with the trappings of living a little closer to nature. While Bright Dead Things is marked by a preponderance of light, such as images of fireflies and neon signs, The Carrying features numerous appearances by various trees, birds, and beetles. Limón also demonstrates a greater willingness to be explicit in naming colors, particularly green. “It’s crazy green, the whole book,” she says. “Lexington is the greenest place I’ve ever lived.” Similarly, where in Bright Dead Things, Limón tells a lot of stories and anecdotes, in The Carrying she is very present in her thoughts and experiences.
As it turns out, these shifts in focus have another, altogether unexpected source. While putting Bright Dead Things together, Limón was diagnosed with chronic vestibular neuronitis, which can cause bouts of vertigo. “If I’m really having vertigo, it’s pretty intense and I really have to focus,”
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UNR Med students mentor next generation of bilingual health care providers
“…Growing up Mexican-American, Diana Padilla did not know any physicians who shared her cultural background.
Now entering her fourth year at the University of Nevada, Reno, School of Medicine, Padilla and fellow UNR Med students and members of the Latino Medical Student Association are helping to bridge that gap by mentoring bilingual northern Nevada high school students exploring careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) health care.
“I’m a Mexican-American, first-generation college graduate and will be the first doctor in my family,” Padilla said. “Before medical school, I did not know a single Latino physician. I loved helping with this program because I wanted these kids to see that people who look like them do make it in this field and they can…”
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Alumna’s photo series reifies dangers of drugs using everyday household items
“Ingredients commonly used in crystal methamphetamine can be found in your everyday household products.
Readily available commodities like isopropyl alcohol, brake fluid and battery cleaner are sometimes used in the synthesis of the drug, said Aydinaneth Ortiz. The UCLA alumna photographed a number of these products for a series titled “Ingredients.” Three photos from the set of eight were on display at the University Art Museum at California State University, Long Beach from January 28 until April 14 as part of the exhibit titled “Call and Response, When We Say … You Say.” With “Ingredients,” Ortiz said she wants to show viewers the dangers of crystal meth, since it is an issue that has impacted her own life and continues to affect many people…”
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Pre-med students overwhelmingly want greater diversity, study shows
“…Pre-medical students support greater diversity in the medical profession, according to a recent national survey.
The survey, which was published April 15 by Kaplan Test Prep, found that 80% of pre-medical students said the medical profession needs to better reflect the demographics of the general patient population.
Representation of minority groups in medical schools has not mirrored that of the patient population, said Petros Minasi, director of pre-health programs at Kaplan.
About 4% of active physicians in the United States are black and another 4% are Hispanic, while black and Hispanic patients each make up 13% of the patient population, Minasi said…”
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Doctor on Video Screen Told a Man He Was Near Death, Leaving Relatives Aghast
“Julia Jacobs
A doctor on a video conference explained to Ernest Quintana that he did not have long to live. Mr. Quintana’s family members criticized the use of telemedicine in that circumstance.
Catherine Quintana’s father had been in and out of a hospital for weeks, and the family understood that his time was running out
Her 78-year-old father, Ernest Quintana, had lung disease and was struggling to breathe on his own. On March 3, he was admitted to a Kaiser Permanente hospital in Fremont, Calif., for the third time in 15 days, Ms. Quintana said. He had his wife of nearly six decades and other members of his family at his side…”
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Mexican scientist cures the Human Papilloma Virus
“…Gallegos has treated hundreds of patients with photodynamic therapy over the last twenty years, studying its effects. Now, she has successfully used this therapy to eradicate HPV in 100% of patients who present without malignant legions, and 64.3% of women with pre-cancerous lesions.
Her discovery will have a huge impact, as most sexually active people will have at least one HPV infection in their lives. Current statistics report that 79 million Americans have HPV, with 14 million new infections each year.
HPV is especially dangerous for women, as it can lead to cervical cancer, which, if left untreated, can cause infertility and death…”
A journalist’s journey, guided by curiosity for her father’s illness
“…Now the story of a daughter who grew up on the border between the United States and Mexico. She searches for herself, while also coming to grips with her father’s mental illness.
Amna Nawaz has the latest selection from the “NewsHour” Bookshelf…”
Link to transcript
3 reasons for the declining number of Latino physicians
The U.S. Hispanic population has seen significant growth (link is external) in past 50 years, so how is it that fewer Latinos are becoming physicians?
Earlier this year, Latino Leaders Magazine reported on this decline (link is external): a 2015 study, conducted by the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture (link is external) at UCLA, indicates that the number of Latino physicians dropped 22 percent over a 30-year period.
1980: 135 Latino physicians per 100,000 Latinos
2010: 105 Latino physicians per 100,000 Latinos…
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This Chicana chemist is paying it forward to support students from underrepresented groups
On a calm September evening in 2010, Alegra Eroy-Reveles had come home from lab and put her toddler to bed when a dear friend called. As they talked, Eroy-Reveles scribbled with a marker on the mirrored closet door, like she did on fume hoods in the chemistry lab where she worked as a postdoc at the University of California (UC), San Francisco. The conversation touched on proteases, probes, experiments that weren’t working, and her disillusionment with the pressure to publish. But it took a turn when the friend said she was dying of breast cancer…
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Mexican American Women Leaders
YC Leyva, PD Witherspoon – Gender, Communication, and the Leadership Gap, 2017
… data. Garcia and Enriquez emphasized the importance of data, including statistical
information, in building a case for Page 304. Mexican American Women Leaders■
277 solutions in work and professional contexts. However …
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How this grassroots environmental justice hero is leading his hometown resistance
The activist mark! Lopez didn’t attend his first march for environmental justice on foot. He was pushed in a stroller. A winner of this year’s Goldman Environmental Prize for grassroots “heroes”, Lopez has agitated alongside his family since childhood.In the late 1980s, when he was growing up in East Los Angeles, Lopez’s grandparents and others took down a proposed state prison, a toxic waste incinerator, and a pipeline planned to run near a school. The 32-year-old Lopez stepped up to help lead the battle against the Exide battery smelter — a factory just outside East L.A.’s borders that for decades spewed noxious chemicals, like lead and arsenic, into neighboring communities that are mostly inhabited by people of color. Activists in the area fought the company for years — citing public health concerns related to lead contamination, such as impaired neurological development in children and increased violence in exposed communities — and the plant officially closed in 2015. Cleanup, however, for which the state set aside $176.6 million, has barely gotten underway and has already hit roadblocks…
Mexican American Psychology: Social, Cultural and Clinical Perspectives
MA Tovar – 2017 – books.google.com
There are now more than 32 million Mexican Americans living in the United States. As a
result, the odds that a clinician will work with a member of this population—one of the fastest-
growing minority groups in the United States—is extremely high. Understanding the culture…
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How perceptions of an anti-immigrant environment negatively impacts Latino health outcomes
The first 50 days of President Trump’s administration has seen an increase in immigration raids and the rise of hate crimes towards immigrants. This anti-immigrant sentiment is creating fear and stress for immigrants which ultimately lead to negative health outcomes. In our paper recently published in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law we examine how living in an anti-immigrant environment can negatively impact Latina/o health, consistent with recent published research by Dr. Francisco Pedraza. Using nationally representative data from the Latino National Health and Immigration Survey (LNHIS, n=1,493) funded by the RWJF Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico and implemented by Latino Decisions, we examine the relationship between Latino’s perceptions of where they live and their self-reported physical health and mental well-being. Our findings show that 38 percent of Latinos perceived their state’s immigrant policies as unfavorable towards immigrants. While this data collection was conducted in 2015, we believe the current political environment will exacerbate health disparities for an entire generation of Latina/o Americans…
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Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa, M. D., Mexican American Professional
Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa (also known as “Dr. Q”) is a neurosurgeon, author, and researcher. Currently, he is the “William J. and Charles H. Mayo Professor” and Chair of Neurologic Surgery and runs a basic science research lab at the Mayo Clinic Jacksonville in Florida. In recognition of his work, Dr. Quiñones-Hinojosa has received many awards and honors, including being named as one of the 100 most influential Hispanics in the U.S. by Hispanic Business Journal in 2008; as 2014 Neurosurgeon of the Year by Voices Against Brain Cancer, where he was also recognized with the Gary Lichtenstein Humanitarian Award; and by the 2015 Forbes magazine as one of Mexico’s most brilliant minds in the world…
Link to biography
The Role of Ethnicity
Counseling LGBTQI + Person of Color…
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Esther Cepeda: Latino health-outreach program is a reminder that it’s all in the name
If culture can be used as a currency to understand and serve a community, it can also be a trap, if the culture is painted with too broad a brush. We think we “know” the so-called Hispanic community — generalizing to certain tropes about language, love of family, deference to authority figures, etc. — and we rarely stop to question whether our initial assessments still hold true.
For instance, a decade ago, the hot medical news was the emerging use of “promotoras” — Spanish-speaking Latina community volunteers who worked with medical organizations to coordinate health outreach activities in their neighborhoods — as a cutting-edge tactic to produce better outcomes in predominantly Mexican populations suffering from obesity, diabetes and other ailments…
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Mexican American Proarchive: Annual Report on Mexican American Professionals
News from the census American Community Survey is generally good for the 2015 year. Mexican American college enrollment was up from 18.7% to 18.9% in the 2014 and 2015 years. Graduate or professional degree attainment was also up from 2.9% to 3.0%. The number of bachelor’s degrees granted to Mexican American students rose from 7.6% in 2014 to 7.8% in 2015.
In spite of these gains, Mexican Americans still remain at the bottom of the ladder when it comes to earning a bachelor’s degree. Even after broadening the group to Latinos or Hispanics, this group still lags behind. According to the Pew Hispanic Center: “As of 2014, among Hispanics ages 25 to 29, just 15% of Hispanics have a bachelor’s degree or higher. By comparison, among the same age group, about 41% of whites have a bachelor’s degree or higher (as do 22% of blacks and 63% of Asians).” Pew reports that the main reasons for this low graduation rate is that Hispanics are less likely “to enroll in a four-year college, attend an academically selective college and enroll full-time.”
Also in the good news column, the University of California will continue to push for a greater number of underrepresented minorities; namely, Chicano/Latino students whose resident freshmen numbers rose from 2.7% to 32.3% of admitted California freshmen. In other good news, the proportion of Chicano/Latino students transferring from community colleges increased to 29.3% from 26.8% for 2015.
Occupations, including those in management, business, science, and art, fared better for Mexican Americans. The number of Mexican Americans filling these occupations rose from 17.4% in 2014 to 17.5% in 2015.
The total number of Hispanics filling these occupations was 16.1% in 2015, a bit lower than Mexican Americans specifically.
The report shows that industrial employment for Mexican Americans remained the same for 2014 and 2015 at 10.2%.
The figures for Hispanic or Latino employment for 2015 and 2016 show a healthy increase.
According to the Pew Hispanic center, “Construction, professional and business services, health services, financial services and food services…showed healthy gains.” Most of the jobs gained by native-born Hispanic workers were in manufacturing, mostly durable goods (82,000 Hispanic workers in this industry), followed by wholesale and retail trade (79,000), publishing, broadcasting, communication and information services (55,000), and construction (54,000).
Foreign-born Hispanics had the most job gains in construction (417,000), followed by business and professional services (179,000). Together, those two industries accounted for almost three-quarters (74%) of all jobs gained by foreign-born Latinos between 2005 and 2006.
The business and professional services sector, which ranges from management and technical services to janitorial, landscaping, and waste management services, is also a key employer for non-Hispanic workers. Of the total increase in employment in 2005-06, non-Hispanic workers accounted for 410,000 employees in the industry, native-born workers 327,000, and foreign-born workers 83,000.
Sources
- Census Bureau, Selected Population Profile in the United States: 2015
- Pew Research Center
- University of California
- Bureau of Labor Statistics
A community in need: Rate of Latino physicians shrinks, even as Latino population swells
By Almendra Carpizo
Record Staff Writer
Celida Lizarraga doesn’t remember seeing many doctors who looked like her when she had to translate for her parents during medical visits.
The 17-year-old said most doctors didn’t speak Spanish and an official interpreter wasn’t always available. And even when interpreters were there, she said, there was disconnect between her parents and the doctor.
“I was the one who my parents relied on,” Lizarraga said.
The group Latino Physicians of California is emphasizing the need for more Latino physicians in the state, where about 40 percent of the population is Latino, but less than 5 percent of doctors are Latino.
During a media phone conference on Friday,…
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Obama White House Touts Latino Gains in Income, Education, Health
by SUZANNE GAMBOA
WASHINGTON, DC — The White House on Wednesday touted gains Hispanics have made in education, income and health insurance during President Barack Obama’s time in office.
In a report released to mark the closing days of Hispanic Heritage Month, which ends Saturday, the White House issued a four-page brief from its Council on Economic Advisers on the Hispanics’ economic progress in the Obama years.
Obama marked the close of Hispanic Heritage month with remarks at a White House reception Wednesday afternoon. Hispanic Heritage Month began Sept. 15 and closes on Saturday.
“Over the last eight years we have made a lot of progress, together for all Americans and nowhere have you been able to see more vividly the progress than in the Hispanic American community,” Obama said at the event…
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The Devil is Loose: Drownings, shootings, high-speed accidents, immigrants in labor-the life of a border paramedic
For the paramedics in Laredo, Texas, the only event more concerning than a Dallas Cowboys’ loss is a fight night. Saturday, May 7, the eve of Mother’s Day, was fight night. Throughout the afternoon, the cemeteries were full of people carrying flowers to their mothers’ tombstones, bright tributes laid down in the searing heat. That evening, much of the town gathered around flat screens to watch the Mexican champion Canelo Álvarez and a British contender named Amir Khan slug it out for the middleweight title. Not many were rooting for Khan…
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The Role of Social Class, Ethnocultural Adaptation, and Masculinity Ideology on Mexican American College Men’s Well-Being
L Ojeda, B Piña-Watson, G Gonzalez – 2016
… More specifically, Latinas are surpassing Latino men, and Mexican Americans overall
are less likely to earn a degree com- pared with other Latino ethnic groups (eg, Puerto
Ricans, Cu- bans; US Census Bureau, 2011). These …
Link to report
