Public Health

Pathway Towards Independent Living:
n March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to a national lockdown in the United States that significantly disrupted social and economic activities for over a year. In Minnesota, the pandemic resulted in the loss of 207,000 jobs in its first year, increased housing insecurity, and forced parents to juggle work with homeschooling. Frontline service workers and health professionals faced heightened risks by continuing to work.

Pathway Towards Independent Living:
Understanding the Latine Experience with Disability in Southeastern Minnesota

In 2014, Dr. Jerry Shannon and Asian Media Access collaborated on a study that looked at the relationship between food purchasing and transit, which was the first study of its kind. The findings were:
• Most low-income, urban communities have a net “outflow” of SNAP benefits, most often to suburban areas.
• Supermarkets and wholesale retailers play the largest role in providing food for SNAP clients, but stores in low-income neighborhoods are often seen negatively.
• Ethnic retailers were also often used by study participants for specific food items, but seldom as a primary food source.
Asian Medica Access and Hispanic Advocacy and Community Empowerment through Research have built on the previous report and designed a new project to further help define patters on food access among Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, and its relationship to the transportation, as well as different shopping behaviors influences by diverse cultures.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had sweeping economic repercussions. Evidence shows it has had disparate effects on both minority populations and people of color. To measure the economic impact of the pandemic on Latino-owned businesses in Minnesota, Hispanic Advocacy and
Community Empowerment through Research (HACER) and the University of Minnesota’s Extension Center for Community Vitality conducted both a qualitative and quantitative survey
to better understand how Latino owned businesses have fared since
he pandemic’s onset.

Many Latinos, especially more recent immigrants, benefit from a healthier lifestyle in their country of origin. There they ate more natural, less processed foods and had more physical activity in their daily lives.
However, as these immigrants adapt to the mainstream U.S. culture, they often adopt a less healthy diet
and a more sedentary lifestyle. Additionally, the language barrier many Latinos face can limit their access to the healthcare system because they have a limited ability to communicate their needs clearly with their doctors and other healthcare providers. To address these challenges and improve the health of Latinos, Hispanic Advocacy and Community Empowerment through Research (HACER) developed a pilot research and outreach project with the Latino community of St. James, MN, called Learning by Doing. This project involved in-depth interviews with nine Latinos residents of St. James and then two interactive nutrition workshops conducted in Spanish. The project was highly successful, and the results have encouraged HACER to expand the program to other Latino communities.

This report evaluates the Stand Up Participate (SUP) program for its performance and outcomes of the second program year (September, 2015- August, 2016). SUP program is a three-year community-based program focuses on at-risk minority youth in North Minneapolis, Brooklyn
Park, and Brooklyn Center. With the changing demographic characteristics in the state of
Minnesota, especially fast rising African American and Southeast Asian American population, makes the issues of minority educational disparities, youth violence prevention, and bicultural healthy living conditions increasingly critical in these minority-concentrated areas.

This report evaluates the ongoing process of the SUP program during the first year (September, 2014- August, 2015). SUP’s target areas include: Brooklyn Park, Brooklyn
Center, and North Minneapolis. All of them have higher than average violence crime rate and homicide rate, which correlates with high percentage of minority families
and poverty rate in those areas. Such living environment affects youth’s safety and health, as well as their behavior and performance. Therefore, the discussion will evince the necessity of the program, and its goal of effectively integrating public health and community law enforcement, in order to reduce racial disparities that
prevail throughout the community.

This report evaluates the ongoing process of the SUP program during the first year (September, 2014- August, 2015). The discussion will evince the necessity of the program, and its goal of effectively integrating public health and community policing in order to reduce racial disparities
that prevail throughout the community. Six domains will be included into discussion: the
improvement of coordination, collaboration, and linkages among stakeholders; the academic outcome of youth participants; reduction in negative encounters with law enforcement; increment in access towards needed public health and/or social services; impact in community
violent crimes perpetrated by minority youth; and efforts in reducing violence against minority
youth. Some issues need to be paid attention to, which is at the end of the report.

Centro Campesino, Inc., in collaboration with Hispanic Advocacy and Community Empowerment through Research (HACER) and Dr. Michael Rodriguez from the Educational Psychology Department at the University of Minnesota, carried out an 18-month Developmental Community Academic Research Award project entitled
Understanding Behaviors, Values, Motivations and Recommendations of Latino Subgroups in Developing
Effective, Community-based Tobacco Cessation Programs. This research worked to unify Latino health promoters, bilingual/bicultural community-based researchers, academic researchers, and key stakeholders in a collaborative effort to better understand tobacco use and tobacco cessation among Latino subgroups in Minnesota. Our asset-oriented approach intended to shift from the current paradigm of focusing on negative behaviors associated with tobacco use, to a paradigm that focuses on positive behaviors associated with not using tobacco among Latino adults in south central Minnesota.