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Mapping Change for Latinos with the Salud America! Healthy Change Platform
Introduction
Because limited resources exist on promoting best practices for preventing childhood obesity in Latinos, Salud America! launched an online platform—Growing Healthy Change—that provides news, resources, and stories to educate Latinos about the latest community change strategies. The new platform features data-infused mapping capabilities flanked by a host of tools to drive change.
Methods
The platform’s unique mapping infrastructure allows users to enter their location and find changes in their area broken down in a variety of ways. It plots the latest changes related to Latino childhood obesity overlaid by the city, school district, county, state, and nation. The maps further describe changes by: the stage of policy development; the type of policy; and six topical areas, including sugary drinks, better food in neighborhoods, healthier marketing, healthier school snacks, active play and active spaces.
Salud America! hosted Tweet chats to explain use of the platform. User data was collected from web metrics, social media metrics, and a brief online survey for this exploratory study.
Results
The platform and its mapping infrastructure is expected to increase knowledge of the latest healthy community transformation strategies, educate users on how change happens, improve skills to create change, and empower change in one of six key policy areas.
Discussion
Developing a platform specifically addressing Latino childhood obesity is needed to drive awareness and change. Findings will highlight the success in which this new culturally relevant tool with mapping capabilities can be used to promote a culture of health among Latinos.
Learning Areas:
Communication and informaticsPublic health or related laws, regulations, standards, or guidelines
Public health or related public policy
Social and behavioral sciences
Learning Objectives:
Describe how the Salud America! Growing Healthy Change Platform’s mapping features allow users to view policy change related to the prevention of Latino childhood obesity, occurring in four different stages of development and six topical areas of change.
Identify which cities, counties and states have developed policies to prevent Latino childhood obesity.
Explain how users can support Latino childhood obesity prevention by recommending that a policy be added to the Growing Healthy Change map and sharing their stories of change.
Keyword(s): Latinos, Health Promotion and Education
Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: As a research area specialist for the past two years, I have primarily focused on curating relevant and engaging digital content for an online platform geared towards inciting healthy changes in the Latino community, specifically Latino children. I have an interest in the intersection of public health and practical policy-making that weaves healthy living into the fabric of all communities.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.