Hispanic Latino Minority Health Coalition Director Takes Lead in Obesity Prevention – Indianapolis

The Hispanic Latino Minority Health Coalition’s executive director, Cecilia Acosta, was recently featured in Indianapolis Woman for her move to help start an obesity prevention program in her coalition, and has also made a change in her own life and diet because of the program she implemented.

The Coalition, which works to assess, design, develop, implement and evaluate programs that are culturally and linguistically appropriate for each minority group represented, asked Acosta to come up with the obesity prevention program, and in doing so, she lost 30 pounds because she learned how to change her diet and was able to implement exercise to her daily routine.

“We have to be the examples,” said Acosta. “I decided to start with my self. I was able to organize myself, and that helped me to improve other areas in my life.”

For more information about the Hispanic Latino Minority Health Coalition of Greater Indianapolis, go to www.hlmhc.org.

About the Hispanic Latino Minority Health Coalition of Greater Indianapolis:
The HLMHC of Greater Indianapolis, Inc. is an institution created to diminish health-disparities faced by the Hispanic/Latino and Black community, through education, advocacy and leadership. The way that this program is designed will allow the coalition focus all it efforts to prevent diseases such as heart diseases, stroke, cancer (breast and prostate) and diabetes. The ultimate goal of the programs provided is to reduce health disparities experienced by racial and ethnic minorities by increasing access to needed healthcare and improving health literacy.”*

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• Colgate-Palmolive and the American Diabetes Association Recognize American Diabetes Month Through Hispanic Outreach
• The Prevention Research Center (PRC) in St. Louis is launching a multinational research project focused on preventing the leading causes of death in Hispanics in the United States and Latin America. – will conduct a four-year, $2.8 million effort to apply and adapt evidence-based strategies for preventing heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity in the United States, Mexico and Brazil
• Little Joe: ‘I’m diabetic! Are you?’
• Nearly 2.5 million Latinos in the United States, or roughly 10 percent of the nation’s Latino population, are afflicted with diabetes, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Diabetes Education Program. – By 2050, the agency predicts, two of five Latino young people, and one in two Latino females born in the year 2000, will have developed diabetes.
• Diabetes is killing Latinos in Ventura County, CA at twice the rate it is claiming lives in other racial and ethnic groups. – Nearly 6% of Latinos who died in Ventura County in 2005 and 2006 were killed by diabetes
• Dr. Eliscer Guzman, with The Mount Sinai Medical Center, Join Forces to Celebrate the Community Diabetes and Cardiovascular Care Program’s Graduation Ceremony on September 16th
• Latino Nutrition Month Inspires Latinos To Bring Healthy Choices To The Table
• Black and Hispanic women in their 20s tend to accumulate more fat in their midsection than their male and older counterparts, possibly putting them at a greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes, new research suggests.
• Hispanics had 21 percent higher obesity prevalence compared with whites. – Hispanics in the Northeast had lower obesity prevalence than Hispanics in the Midwest, South or West.
• About 40.9 percent of Hispanic children between 10 and 17 years old are obese in the United States, according to the BHC. But in Texas this number is even higher, at 46.8 percent.
• The U.S.-Mexico Border Health Commission has announced that obesity and diabetes are its top priorities for 2009-2010. – Approximately 1.5 million adults in the border region are overweight or obese and another 1.2 million have been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes
• Hispanic children in US at greater risk for obesity than other ethnic/racial groups
• Sonia Sotomayor: 10 Things You Should Know
• Crossing the border and tipping the scale: Diabetes in Latino communities
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health aim to help U.S. Hispanic diabetics enjoy traditional food, officials say. A guide, Mas que comida, es vida — “It′s more than food, it′s life”
• The number of Americans who could lose their vision to diabetes-related eye diseases is going to skyrocket over the next four decades, with elderly Hispanics and blacks hit hardest because of higher rates of Type 2 diabetes
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• Study: Diabetes Costs America $218 Billion A Year – In case you didn’t know 2.4 million Hispanics have Diabetes and One in three Hispanic children in California will be diagnosed with diabetes by 2010 – (this is in my opinion one of the biggest problems we face along with education)