Background-A growing literature on Latino's beliefs about cancer focuses on the concept of fatalismo (fatalism), despite numerous conceptual ambiguities concerning its meaning, definition, and measurement. This study explored Latina women's views on breast cancer and screening within a cultural framework of destino ("destiny"), or the notion that both personal agency and external forces can influence health and life events

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This paper examines Latinas' assessments of their individual body shape and weight vis-à-vis their beliefs and attitudes regarding mainstream and alternative body images. A mixed method data collection system was used based on individual instruments and focus group guidelines. While individual measures revealed participants' preference for thinner body types than what they actually considered themselves to be, group data underscore contradictory body paradigms, defined as Latinas' Paradoxical Body Images (LAPABI). Findings suggest the prevalence of a mainstream stereotype represented by the fit/thin White woman as the ultimate body ideal, along with the Latina curvy shape as its counter-image. The paper further discusses the importance of the media, and of divergent cultural values, in supporting these co-existing body ideals, as well as the need for more studies addressing their combined effect on Latinas' obesity patterns and their weight-control efforts.

Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the United States. Hispanic American women in particular have higher rates of obesity than their non-Hispanic White counterparts. In this article, the authors review the existing literature on acculturation as it relates to obesity and health behaviors among U.S. Hispanic women. In addition, a conceptual framework is proposed to examine factors contributing to obesity through "selective acculturation." This concept challenges traditionally held unilateral assumptions that underscore Hispanic women's unhealthful behavioral patterns by explaining a process whereby Hispanic women both maintain some older health-related behaviors and acquire new ones once they settle in a new culture.

This article critically examines the recent literature on stigma that addresses the overspread association among the COVID-19 pandemic and racial and ethnic groups (i.e., mainland Chinese and East Asian populations) assumed to be the source of the virus. The analysis begins by reviewing the way in which infectious diseases have historically been associated with developing countries and their citizens, which, in turn, are supposed to become prime vectors of contagion. The latter extends to the current labeling of COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus,” that—along with a number of other terms—has fueled race-based stigma against Asian groups in the United States and overseas. This review further discusses the limitations of current COVID-19 antistigma initiatives that mostly focus on individual-based education campaigns as opposed to multisectorial programs informed by human rights and intersectional perspectives. Finally, the article ends with a call to the international public health community toward addressing the most recent outbreak of stigma, one that has revealed the enormous impact of words in amplifying racial bias against particular minority populations in the developed world. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print March 18, 2021: e1–e5. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306201 )

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Based on a systematic qualitative analysis of articles published by The New York Times (2009–2017), this article presents the main media frames that support the access to government-sponsored health care by undocumented immigrants, just before and after passage of the U.S. Affordable Care Act in 2010. Under the umbrella of “selective inclusion,” this study highlights a “compassionate frame” that conveys sympathy toward severely ill, undocumented immigrants. This approach is reinforced by a “cost-control” frame that underlines the economic benefits of providing health care to the undocumented immigrant population in the United States. Supported by both humane and market-based approaches, these frames make a compelling case for the inclusion of particular groups into the U.S. health care safety net. Ultimately, these findings contribute to our understanding of the media framing of undocumented immigrants’ right to health care on the basis of deservingness.

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