scholarly journals Ethnic Attrition and the Observed Health of Later-Generation Mexican Americans

2016 ◽  
Vol 106 (5) ◽  
pp. 467-471 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisca Antman ◽  
Brian Duncan ◽  
Stephen J. Trejo

Numerous studies find that U.S.-born Hispanics differ significantly from non-Hispanic whites on important measures of human capital, including health. Nevertheless, almost all studies rely on subjective measures of ethnic self-identification to identify immigrants' U.S.-born descendants. This can lead to bias due to “ethnic attrition,” which occurs whenever a U.S.-born descendant of a Hispanic immigrant fails to self-identify as Hispanic. This paper shows that Mexican American ethnic attritors are generally more likely to display health outcomes closer to those of non-Hispanic whites. This biases conventional estimates of Mexican American health away from suggesting patterns of assimilation and convergence with non-Hispanic whites.

2020 ◽  
pp. 135910532097765
Author(s):  
Jennifer J. Salinas ◽  
Roy Valenzuela ◽  
Jon Sheen ◽  
Malcolm Carlyle ◽  
Jennifer Gay ◽  
...  

Most Mexican-Americans do not meet current physical activity recommendations. This paper uses the ORBIT model of obesity intervention development as a framework to outline the process of establishing three employer-based walking challenges in El Paso, Texas, a predominantly Mexican American community. The walking challenges were planned and implemented through the Border Coalition for Fitness and participating partnering organizations. Over 2000 participants and several employers took part in the walking challenges. Results from this ORBIT Phase 1 design intervention suggest that walking challenges are a feasible approach to increase physical activity in Mexican-Americans.


1994 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 221-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terri Schwab ◽  
Julie Meyer ◽  
Rosa Merrell

Adherence to the treatment regimen for patients with diabetes is of major concern to healthcare practitioners, particularly when dealing with the high-risk, low-income, Mexican-American population. Assessing the attitudes and beliefs of this group is vital for planning effective and realistic intervention strategies. Therefore, we designed a culturally sensitive instrument to measure health beliefs and attitudes of low-income Mexican Americans with diabetes. The Health Belief Model (HBM) was used as a basis for this study because it is well accepted as a predictor of health-related behaviors. However, we found that the HBM was not an effective tool for assessing the health beliefs or attitudes of this patient population even after rigorous efforts to operationalize the HBM and after conducting extensive statistical analyses. Only two of the five subscales of the traditional HBM, barriers and benefits, were reliable. Scales to measure acculturation and fatalism were added to increase the cultural sensitivity of the tool. These added components were found to be an important variable in interpreting the results for low-income Mexican-American patients.


1994 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Skerry

In the countless conversations about U.S. immigration policy that I have had with Mexican Americans of varied backgrounds and political orientations, seldom have my interlocutors failed to remind me that “We were here first,” or that “This was our land and you stole it from us.” Even a moderate Mexican American politician like former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros sounds the same theme in a national news magazine:It is no accident that these regions have the names they do—Los Angeles, San Francisco, Colorado, Montana.…It is a rich history that Americans have been led to believe is an immigrant story when, in fact, the people who built this area in the first place were Hispanics.


Author(s):  
Natalie Mendoza

Abstract This article argues that historical narrative has held a significant role in Mexican American identity formation and civil rights activism by examining the way Mexican Americans in the 1930s and 1940s used history to claim full citizenship status in Texas. In particular, it centers on how George I. Sánchez (1906–1972), a scholar of Latin American education, revised historical narrative by weaving history and foreign policy together through a pragmatic lens. To educators and federal officials, Sánchez used this revisionist history to advocate for Mexican Americans, insisting that the Good Neighbor policy presented the United States with the chance to translate into reality the democratic ideals long professed in the American historical imagination. The example of Sánchez also prompts us to reexamine the historiography in our present day: How do we define the tradition and trajectory of Mexican American intellectual thought in U.S. history? This article posits that when Sánchez and other Mexican Americans thought about their community’s collective identity and civil rights issues through history, they were contributing to a longer conversation driven by questions about identity formation and equality that first emerged at the end of the U.S. War with Mexico in 1848. These questions remain salient in the present, indicating the need for a historiographic examination that will change how we imagine the tradition of intellectual thought in the United States.


2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 336-354
Author(s):  
Kiron Chatterjee ◽  
Fiona Crawford

The nature of work was undergoing dramatic change before the pandemic as the digital age continued to transform all sectors of society. In this paper we describe pre-pandemic trends in types of work, the workforce and working arrangements in the UK. We show how these changes were having gradual yet significant impacts on commuting and other work-related travel which were apparent in national travel data series. Key features of these impacts were increasing diversification and flexibility in work travel. We bring together findings on how working practices and travel have been altered by the pandemic and report expectations and opinions on its longer-term legacies. The pandemic has accelerated pre-pandemic trends and led to a shift in how work is performed for almost all sectors of the economy – but grasping the opportunity for this to contribute to deep carbon reductions from transport and to improve equity and health outcomes will require carefully directed policy interventions.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Casandra D. Salgado

Existing research inadequately addresses the variation in Mexican Americans’ patterns of ethnic identification. Drawing on 78 interviews, I address this question by exploring how conceptions of ancestry and nationality shape ethnic identification among New Mexico’s long-standing Mexican American population, Nuevomexicanos. I find that Nuevomexicanos emphasized their ties to Spanish heritage within the history of New Mexico to explain their ethnicity and to construct their identity in opposition to Mexican immigrants. Although Nuevomexicanos varied in their claims to Mexican ancestry, they generally prioritized their roots in the original Spanish settlement of New Mexico to emphasize distinctions in ancestry, nationality, and regionality from Mexican immigrants. Moreover, despite Nuevomexicanos’ persistent claims to Spanish ancestry, they did not perceive themselves as racially White. Instead, Spanish ancestry was integral to Nuevomexicano identity because it enabled them to highlight their regional ties to New Mexico and long-time American identities. Thus, I argue that Nuevomexicanos’ enduring claims to Spanish ancestry represent a defensive strategy to enact dissociation from stigmatized Mexican immigrants. Overall, these findings show that Mexican Americans’ dissociation strategies are contingent on how they define themselves as members of an ethnic and national community. These findings also indicate that “Mexican American” as an identity term is a loosely maintained membership category among “Mexican Americans” because of their intragroup heterogeneity.


Circulation ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 116 (suppl_16) ◽  
Author(s):  
R. P Mason ◽  
Ruslan Kubant ◽  
Christopher Malinski ◽  
Adam Jacoby ◽  
Robert F Jacob ◽  
...  

Background: Epidemiologic studies indicate that Mexican Americans (MA) have a higher prevalence of CV risk factors and disease as compared with non-Hispanic whites (NHW). This increase in CV risk may be due, in part, to differences in endothelial function. In this study, we measured endothelial function in cells from normotensive, age-matched MA and NHW donors, as well as the effects of treatment with nebivolol, a new β 1 -selective blocker with vasodilating properties. Methods: Endothelial nitric oxide (NO) and peroxynitrite (ONOO − ) release in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) from age-matched MA and NHW donors were measured simultaneously using a nanosensor array. The effects of nebivolol on NO and ONOO − release were evaluated following pretreatment (24 h) with a calcium ionophore (CaI) as a receptor-independent stimulus. Endothelial NO synthase (eNOS) levels were measured by Western blot analysis, and drug-membrane interactions were determined by small angle x-ray diffraction approaches. Results: NO bioavailability in endothelial cells of MA donors was 30% lower than that of cells from NHW donors (383 ± 10 nM versus 543 ± 8 nM, n=6) following stimulation with CaI (1.0 μM). Pretreatment with nebivolol (1.0 μM) eliminated these interracial differences and enhanced NO release disproportionately in MA cells (57%) versus NHW cells (20%). Nebivolol also reduced ONOO − levels in MA endothelium by 75% (746 ± 12 nM to 195 ± 10 nM) and by 50% in NHW cells (416 ± 7 nM to 191 ± 13 nM). The ratio of NO to ONOO − , an indicator of eNOS coupling, increased more than 5-fold in MA cells following nebivolol treatment. In addition, eNOS levels were 40% lower in MA endothelium compared to NHW, but increased 2-fold with nebivolol treatment. These effects were not observed with atenolol, a hydrophilic β 1 -selective antagonist. Conclusion: We observed differences between Mexican Americans and non-Hispanic whites in endothelial NO bioavailability and nitroxidative stress–factors that may contribute to increased CV risk. Treatment with nebivolol, but not atenolol, enhanced both the expression and coupling efficiency of eNOS in Mexican American endothelium.


Stroke ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (Suppl_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lewis B Morgenstern ◽  
Lynda Lisabeth ◽  
River Gibbs ◽  
Sehee Kim ◽  
Charles Agyemang

Background/Objective: We studied the association of being born outside of the U.S. (immigrant) or born in the U.S. (non-immigrant) with 90 day post-stroke outcomes in a population-based stroke study in Texas. Methods: Stroke cases from 2008-2016 were identified from the Brain Attack Surveillance in Corpus Christi (BASIC) project. Outcomes among survivors included ADL/IADL score (higher scores worse) for functional assessment, 3MSE (cognition, lower scores worse), and NIHSS Score (neurologic, higher scores worse). Weighted linear regression models were used to assess the effect of immigration status on the outcomes. Analysis was completed using multiple imputation and inverse probability weighting to account for differential attrition. Results: Of 935 Mexican Americans available for analysis, 83 were immigrants and 852 were non-immigrants. Immigrants had resided in the U.S. on average 47 years. Immigrants were significantly older (69 vs. 66 years), more likely male (60% vs. 49%), more likely to have atrial fibrillation and have less education than non-immigrants (all p<0.05). No differences in hypertension, diabetes, cholesterol, insurance, smoking or other comorbidities existed. The Table provides the data from the fully adjusted models. Immigrants had better functional outcome (mean difference (MD) = -0.22; p=0.02), and no difference for neurologic outcome (MD= -0.15; p=0.15). There was an association of worse cognitive outcome in immigrants (MD= -5.25; p=0.009), however, the association was explained by attenuated after the adjustment for the lower educational attainment in immigrants (MD= -0.79; p=0.64). Conclusions: In this community, there was no evidence of worse stroke outcome among Mexican American immigrants, who had lived in the U.S. for decades, compared with non-immigrants. Further studies of more recent immigrant populations are warranted.


Circulation ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 137 (suppl_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hong Seok LEE ◽  
Zhiwei Zhang ◽  
Karen Xu ◽  
Yong-Moon Park

Background: Cardiorespiratory fitness is a distinct health characteristic that relates to the ability to perform physical activity. Higher cardiorespiratory fitness was reported to have reverse relationship with overall mortality and morbidity rates due to various chronic disease. The assessment of cardiorespiratory fitness was measured by maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max; mL/kg/minute) on a submaximal treadmill test. This study was aimed to examine cardiorespiratory fitness among U.S. adults 20-49 years of age, to describe the distribution of cardiorespiratory fitness and cardiovascular risk factors depends on different ethnicity for without physical limitations or indications of cardiovascular disease. Method: Data from the 1999-2004, National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey were used to describe the distribution of cardiorespiratory fitness for adults 20-49 years of age. 8324 out of 31126 subjects have valid values of cardiopulmonary fitness in the dataset with 5391 in low category of cardiorespiratory fitness (VO 2 max < 27), 2606 in medium category (37.1 > VO 2 max ≥27) and 327 in high category (37.1 ≥ VO 2 max). The risk factors for cardiopulmonary fitness was assessed by using logistic regression after adjusting all cardiovascular risk factors. All data were analyzed using SAS Ver. 9.4. Result: Overall, there is no significant association of cardiorespiratory fitness with ethnicity ( P =0.08). 65.9% of study population was male in all races. Among, non-Hispanic whites, those with 25 m 2 /kg > BMI had better cardiorespiratory fitness (more than 37.1 mL/kg/minute) than those with BMI ≥ 35 [Odds ratio (OR): 0.496, Confidence Interval (CI): 0.258-0.957]. A similar pattern was observed for Mexican Americans. Non-Hispanic black with 25 m 2 /kg > BMI had better cardiorespiratory fitness than ones with BMI ≥ 35 m 2 /kg [OR:0.137, CI:0.059-0.318], 35 m 2 /kg > BMI≥30 m 2 /kg [OR:0.269, CI:0.124-0.583], 30 m 2 /kg > BMI≥25 m 2 /kg [OR: 0.241,0.123-0.318]. Non-Hispanic white with higher diastolic blood pressure over 90 mmHg had tendency to have lower cardiorespiratory fitness. Among metabolic panel, only Mexican American with LDL<100 mg/dl has higher cardiorespiratory fitness [OR:0.559, CI:0.319-0.981]. Discussion: Our findings on cardiorespiratory fitness level among non-Hispanic blacks, non-Hispanic whites and Mexican Americans are similar to previously reported studies, however, non-Hispanic black had different risk factors related to cardiorespiratory fitness, especially significant benefit from lower BMI less than 25 m 2 /kg since other ethnicities with BMI less than 25 m 2 /kg had benefit only compared to BMI> 35 m 2 /kg. These results can be used to improve cardiorespiratory fitness level for future population based on ethnicities. The different risk factors in fitness status can also be used to develop health policies and targeted educational campaigns.


2019 ◽  
pp. 178-200
Author(s):  
Edward Telles ◽  
Christina A. Sue

This chapter summarizes the study’s findings regarding how U.S.-born Mexican American respondents negotiate the ethnic and American aspects of their identities, as well as the Spanish language, and their attitudes on immigration. Almost without exception, the American identity of the respondents remained constant, whereas the strength and meaningfulness of their ethnic background varied by individual and context. The chapter then expounds on the concept of the ethnic core as necessary for understanding the experiences of Mexican Americans, as well as other groups, and why it fills explanatory gaps left by theories of assimilation and race. Finally, it assesses the likelihood that ethnicity will remain durable for Mexican Americans in the future based on a variety of factors.


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