Yet Latinos continue to face obesity, heart disease, and cancer health disparities.

What’s driving these disparities?

Systemic and structural inequities – a lack of access to healthcare, stable housing, quality education, fair wages, safe streets, healthy food, in combination with struggles in other social determinants of health and racial/ethnic discrimination – make it harder for Latinos to achieve health and wealth in America.

Reducing health disparities requires systemic changes to improve social and environmental factors and create more equitable living conditions for Latinos.

That’s why Salud America! is here.

What is Salud America!?

Salud America! is a national, Latino-focused communication network that aims to improve health equity by creating and sharing culturally relevant news, stories, videos, and action tools for grassroots health policy and systemic changes that address the social determinants of health.

Salud America! is based at the Institute for Health Promotion Research at UT Health San Antonio, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

We launched in 2007 with 1,000 Latino researchers.

Since then, the network has grown to over 500,000 community and school leaders, health care providers, and parents across the nation.

This includes @SaludAmerica social media followers (~70,000), email subscribers (~70,000), and website users (~400,000 a year).

What Does Salud America! Do?

Salud America! fuels its network with daily content to raise their awareness of Latino health inequities and drive their capacity to advocate  for systemic and policy changes.

But massive amounts of content hit the Internet every minute.

That is why our communication team – a communications director and three digital content curators – uses digital content curation.

With digital content curation, we use a systematic, refined process to create Latino-focused, tailored online and social media health messages. We expose our network to this content and messaging to improve their knowledge of Latino health issues, as well as their individual and collective efficacy to advocate for health system and policy changes.

Our content types include:

•  research-driven online articles about policy and systemic changes, resources, and data on social determinants of health and Latino health disparities;

•  case study stories and videos about real community change-makers, called Salud Heroes, who have made a successful systemic/policy change for Latino health equity, highlighting steps they took so that others can follow;

•  #SaludTues Tweetchat events on Twitter and Salud Talks podcast episodes to engage leaders in discussions for health equity solutions; and

•  digital action opportunities for adoption of systemic changes.

What Topics Does Salud America! Cover?

Salud America! creates content in three main areas of Latino health equity:

•  Healthy Families & Schools, which includes healthcare and vaccination access, childhood trauma, early education, and prevention of COVID-19;

•  Healthy Neighborhoods & Communities, which covers access to affordable housing, reliable transportation, green spaces, and healthy food; and

•  Healthy & Cohesive Cultures, which refers to social cohesion, reducing discrimination, and increasing compassion toward poor, minority, and immigrant communities.

Our content is rooted in Social Cognitive Theory, which posits that we learn from the behavior of others.

We accelerate the adoption of health and system changes not present in a school or community setting by conducting digital outreach that features examples of Latino peer models. By synchronically using multiple communication channels, these peer models have acquired practices that raise self- and collective-efficacy for making changes that support Latino health equity.

Exposure to Salud America! content is correlated with a high degree of personal engagement in advocacy actions at the local, state, and national levels, and increased self-efficacy to advocate for a healthy system and policy change, according to survey data.

In 2018, advocates used our content to achieve 275 policy wins. This saved states and individuals millions in healthcare costs and made communities healthier places to live, grow, work and play, according to an external evaluation of our program.

How Does Salud America! Drive Advocacy for Change?

We enable people to use data as a foundation for systemic change.

With our digital data dashboard, the Salud America! Health Equity Report Card, over 28,000 advocates have entered their county name and automatically generated location-specific, Latino-focused maps and data visualizations on social determinants of health.

Advocates easily print, email, or share the report with local leaders and colleagues to speak up about local concerns over health equity issues.

We also empower people to use their digital voice for change.

Between 2018-2022, Salud America! organized 30 public health campaigns where members submitted 19,000+ comments to urge national leaders to take action for Latino health equity.

Over 4,000 advocates have used our digital action packs to create grassroots change in their communities. For example, 1,124 have downloaded our action pack to form a school food pantry for food-insecure students.

Just take A.J. Williams, for example.

As a child, Williams was exposed to domestic violence. Now a police officer in Fort Worth, Texas, Williams is making sure children like him are getting the support they need in school through the Handle With Care program, where police notify schools when they encounter children at a traumatic scene, so that schools can provide support the next day.

After COVID-19 derailed an idea to team up Fort Worth police and schools for a local Handle With Care program, Williams reinitiated plans with help from a Handle With Care action pack from Salud America! at UT Health San Antonio. He downloaded the action pack with template emails and materials to give him a foundation for his work.

Williams then trained police and school leaders about the program and brought regional education leaders to the table who helped create a region-wide notification system.

Now area police departments and schools can opt into Fort Worth’s regional Handle With Care program, instead of having to create a new system on their own.

The notification system could even be scaled up statewide – all to help Texas children.

“Sometimes you have a kid that is acting bad because they are trying to mask issues that are going on at home,” Williams said. “We want to do our part to try to help these kids get through school.” •

About the author:

Amelie G. Ramirez, Ph.D., of UT Health San Antonio, is a health equity pioneer who has achieved local, state, national, presidential, and international recognition for her successes in reducing Latino cancer health disparities and championing system and policy changes that promote health equity for Latinos. As Chair and Full Professor of the Department of Population Health Sciences at UT Health San Antonio, a Hispanic-Serving Institute, Ramirez leads a multidisciplinary team of public health researchers, data scientists, and communication specialists in addressing the cancer experience of Latinos. Dr. Ramirez leads the Salud America! communication program (www.salud-america.org; @SaludAmerica), a national network of over 500,000 community, school, and healthcare leaders. Dr. Ramirez has been recognized by the Society of Behavioral Medicine, the Obama White House, the National Academy of Medicine, and more. Dr. Ramirez is a native of Laredo, Texas.