Image Credit: Trinitas Regional

Trinitas Regional Medical Center brings awareness to health issues facing Latinos

During Hispanic Heritage Month, Hispanic Lifestyle is profiling businesses, organizations and individuals who have inspiring stories when reaching out to the Latino Community. Here, Hispanic Lifestyle is highlighting Trinitas Regional Medical Center for their focus on helping Latinos make better health decisions.

Since 2010 Trinitas Regional Medical Center’s library has been offering consumer health outreach to the Latino community by using educational quizzes in order to increase awareness about various health topics, such as stroke, heart attack, Alzheimer’s, medical terminology and pre-diabetes. With their quizzes, Trinitas has reached thousands in the community, through the hospital, library’s websites or the virtual world platform of Second Life.

According to their website, over 86% of people taking the health quizzes reported they’ve learned something new and that they would use this information for future health care decisions. This information, in both English and Spanish will likely assist Latinos in making better health choices to improve quality of life.

Community Initiatives

In 2016, all the quizzes were translated into Spanish to expand outreach locally near Elizabeth, New Jersey, which is 59.5% Hispanic. This was important because not only do Hispanics face higher risks of heart disease and stroke, these diseases are also the #1 killer of Latino Americans.

Information provided by Trinitas noted that Latinos face a 66% higher risk of being diagnosed with diabetes and 72% have high blood pressure compared to non-Hispanics. Additionally, Latinos are one and half times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s. With all these statistics, consumer health outreach about these topics is vital.

All age groups in the Hispanic community have taken the health quizzes but two age groups were virtually tied at 31.25% each: 18-30 and 41-50.  While a majority (46.67%) have a high school education, 20% have a college degree and nearly 7% hold a graduate degree or higher.  For 92.31% Spanish is their primary language.

Most encouraging, similar to their English speaking counterparts, 80% said they learned something new from the quizzes and would use this information for their future health care decisions.

With their public information campaign to bring about awareness of health issues facing Latinos, Hispanic Lifestyle is proud to acknowledge Trinitas’ efforts during Hispanic Heritage Month.

In our next article, we will profile New American Funding, a Southern California business that lead by a woman who has been recognized by Hispanic Lifestyle, as a 2016 Latina of Influence.