Analyzing the Latino community and focusing on the women that make up this fast-growing demographic create a better understanding of the needs and considerations for health-care professionals and social policies. It is important that national health and health-care data on the Latino ethnic group be presented by gender in order to determine areas specific to women. This review focuses on the existing health and health-care data of Latino women (Latinas). The ability to distinguish the health-care experiences of Latinas will increase the understanding of existing barriers to their health care, the initiatives needed to overcome them, and increase the overall quality of health among Latina women.

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It is well documented that a large percentage of the general population is either vitamin D insufficient or deficient. Vitamin D deficiency adversely affects bone health. More recently, it has been reported that vitamin D is an important component in immune function and glycemic control Substantial data exist that demonstrate an association between vitamin D insufficiency/deficiency and mortality/clinical outcomes of critically ill patients. The larger clinical trials addressing this association have demonstrated an increased odds ratio for mortality in both vitamin D insufficient and deficient patients when compared to those with sufficient vitamin D. There is also some evidence that vitamin D status worsens during critical illness without supplementation of this vitamin. Supplementation of vitamin D during critical illness of patients with vitamin D deficiency has been studied, but not in great detail. Daily supplementation of the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) of vitamin D does very little to improve the 25(OH)D serum concentrations in the critically ill patients with vitamin D insufficiency or deficiency. There is some evidence that high-dose therapy of vitamin D improves the depressed serum concentrations of this vitamin; however, there are no clinical outcome data available yet. The association between vitamin D insufficiency or deficiency and clinical outcome in the critically ill appears to be important. Supplementation of vitamin D will increase the serum concentrations of this vitamin; however the optimal dose needs to be identified along with an assessment of clinical outcome.

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