By Miranda Koerner
Staff Writer

The Institute for Health Promotion Research, part of the school of medicine at University of Texas Health and Science Center at San Antonio, recently announced the creation of “Salud America! The National Latino Obesity Prevention Network.” The network aims to reverse the epidemic of obesity among Latino children.

Salud America! will be funded by a five-year, $5.2 million dollar grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and based at the IHPR at the Health Science Center. Amelie G. Ramirez, the network’s principal investigator and director of the IHPR, said the Latino population is particularly vulnerable to obesity and health problems.

“This is important because we have a large proportion of Hispanic children in San Antonio,” Ramirez said. “At least 15 percent of Latinos under 19 are overweight. This raises their risk of cardio vascular disease, diabetes, and chronic diseases. In general, the rates we see for Hispanic children are higher than black or white children.”

Ramirez said Latinos are vulnerable to obesity due to problems with low family income, a lack of access to safe areas to walk or exercise and a lack of access to health insurance or health care.

“They may not get to play outside or walk places like other people,” Ramirez said. “There have not been any national programs to help us prioritize what we need to do to help with obesity in the Latino community. This will help us to deal with community, state and national issues of Latino childhood obesity.”

In the coming weeks, Salud America! will form a workshop dedicated to Latino childhood obesity research. The workshop will identify and target key issues toward the cause of childhood obesity. It will also create a network of more than 150 members across the nation.

“Once we identify the problems, the grant lets us create projects to see if we can make a difference,” Ramirez said. “Once those are completed, we hope to look for new resources to help things out in a much larger way on a national level. We’re really excited.”

Ramirez said members plan to work with city councils to develop safe and accessible neighborhoods. They want to encourage active behaviors such as walking to work or school. They also plan to look at school policies regarding nutrition and physical education and study the cultural upbringing in family households.

Salud America! also plans to develop up to 20 pilot research projects of up to $75,000 each. These projects will serve as research and help investigators target specific methods to prevent obesity and tailored to the needs of Latino children and their families.

“We feel this is the next major program not only addressing our Latino population but the population as a whole,” Ramirez said. “We’re looking at reversing the obesity epidemic and being part of the solution.”

Salud America!’s funding comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s $500 million initiative to reverse the epidemic of childhood obesity by 2015.