The well-being of Texas children is essential to the future of our state. Recent years have presented significant challenges for Texas' youngest residents, particularly in areas of economic stability, health, and education. According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Texas declined from 43rd to 45th in national rankings for overall child…

The public health journey is a remarkable one, filled with twists and turns as well as risks and rewards. Because promoting the health of others represents a mission brimming with meaning, our professional work is also profoundly personal. At this extraordinary moment in our nation's public health history, I reflect on the purpose of the…

Designing culturally sensitive personalized interventions is essential to sustain patients' involvement in their treatment and encourage patients to take an active role in their own health and health care. We consider patient activation and empowerment as a cyclical process defined through patient accumulation of knowledge, confidence, and…

The new Cooperative Extension National Framework for Health and Wellness is a tool to help Extension systematically address the programmatic area of health and wellness at the individual, community, environmental, and policy levels. Key strategies of the framework tool are provided and suggestions for ways that Extension can use this framework…

School-based health centers (SBHCs) and school nurses know that healthy students learn better. They share an important mission: providing preventive care for all students they serve, with the goal of keeping students in class learning. They both: (1) Educate students and families about healthy behaviors and nutrition; (2) Enroll students and…

This article assesses the relative importance of several factors believed to reduce the likelihood of health insurance coverage among working Latinos in California, including cost, immigration history, availability of insurance, beliefs about insurance, and beliefs about health and health care. According to a survey of 1,000 randomly selected…

This report examines the prevalence and severity of health problems that hinder welfare recipients' ability to get and hold jobs, using data from interviews with women who in May 1995 received welfare and lived in four poor, urban areas. The study compared the health of women who had left welfare and were working, who combined welfare and work,…

This publication recognizes the importance of women's health, and more specifically, the role of culture, ethnicity, race, socioeconomic background, geographic location, and other social and economic factors in contributing to health status. After a section that highlights important issues, section 1, "Factors Affecting the Health of Women of…