[Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign foreign [Music] I've been working for the Medical College of Wisconsin for the past 15 years or so really doing a lot of community engagement work across the city of Milwaukee I am a Hispanic professor and so a lot of the work that I do is really serving the Hispanic Community here in Milwaukee and trying to elevate understanding really about health and how we can improve our health as we as we go through our days in life and the culture every culture actually does have an impact on how people perceive their ability to change their own health trajectory of course I'm reflecting on my own family's experiences my grandparents is Abuelos were born in Mexico my grandmother was from manzanio Colima my father was also born in manzanillo my father on the other hand just passed this last January and he passed from something called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and the term idiopathic sounds complicated all it means is we don't know what the cause was we as scientists and as Healthcare professionals we're not sure why he died and the reality for the communities that we come from from communities of color is there are Health disparities for our communities that we don't fully understand you are involved in a very important National program or project that is called all of us can you tell us what is this about and what is looking to achieve we're trying to recruit one million people across the United States from every different background and that means if the person is from a different community of color if they're from the able Community or the disabled Community if they're from various different backgrounds in terms of LGBT status transgender all of these differences in how we are in the world they have implications for our health and our health care there are subtle differences in our genetics that can impact how we in take in medication and the side effects that we have and right now we're really treating to sort of the average person oftentimes it's a sort of average middle-aged white man and we haven't gotten enough genetic information from many other different groups and we are unable right now to really tailor medication for those groups in the way that we want to and that's really the future of healthcare is precise medication so that we're minimizing side effects and we're getting exactly the targeted medication dose and the right medication for the right person we're starting to return what are called whole genome sequences and people who want to know what their health risks are from a genetics perspective and I think something that's even more kind of everyday is we're starting to return what we call pharmacogenetic results which means how do your genes impact the way that your body ingests medication and metabolizes medication and that can differ from person to person that information will be in the physician's hand as well and I think that can really be transformative for People's Health Care really the only requirement right now is that you're an adult and we're again we're asking people from every different background every Community whether that's white black Hispanic Asian one of the things for the Hispanic community in particular is I want to be very clear that the federal government is involved and they've been very careful to think through that there's different immigration status even within one home uh social security number is not required to participate in this study and the information is protected so you can't get this information if you're from law enforcement for example so it will have no implications for somebody's immigration status if you're here in the United States it's important for us to ensure that you have an opportunity to participate regardless of what your status is regardless of what your background is we're asking everyone please participate is there any about how many Latinos have participated or joined to these database I don't have the national numbers but I can tell you right now that for Milwaukee we're sitting at about 530 people it's about seven or eight percent of our overall sample size it's about half of the the percentage of Hispanics that are represented in Milwaukee March is the month of women have you a picture in that experience about Latino women one of the classic things for me is the person who took care of the entire family always um you know preparing meals making sure that we came home making sure that the families together oftentimes Hispanic women and women as as a whole put their own health last because they have so many pressures trying to make sure that the family is moving forward in this life and so we see sometimes women ignore uh problems that they're having there's more than one situation here at the Medical College where we have heard about a woman who clearly had you know the symptoms of cancer but didn't come in for appropriate screening early and not focusing on what is the future of Health Care women can set for themselves and for their family the expectation that health comes first there are these beliefs among Latinos that we do many wrong things with our diet with our Traditions can you talk about both actually the food in the Hispanic culture is heavy or it's the wrong type of food to be healthy and sometimes I see people trying to adjust how we're eating I mean we even have programs and the reality is you know I like my tortillitas and I like to eat beans and all those things right just like everybody else I think actually the solution is often digging deeper into our own culture and there are healthy foods for example within the culture maybe it's replacing and having frijoles negros instead of refried beans but that's still part of the culture rather than saying we're gonna we're gonna switch this out for something that's not really part of the culture so part of that is just reaching deep inside ourselves and deep inside the stories within our families the other part of Hispanic culture that we know is protective around health is that we are a very social group of people and those social ties are incredibly important both in terms of what we feel inside of ourselves when we connect with other people but we're also there for people when they're struggling with their health and maybe we're able to provide some additional support around that person so I think there are incredible strengths within our culture around healthful behaviors right we have to think about all the transitions that have also happened for our families and how those transitions have impacted us and impacted our health so I think the easiest thing is to go to the website so the national website is very simply 3. join all of us.orgas espanol is simply join all of us slash es we could not do this work the Medical College of Wisconsin and the National Institutes of Health could not do this work without local partners that are working in our communities of color we're working extremely closely with agencies like United Community Center on 16th Street fqhc the federal qualified Health Clinic that's serving the Hispanic community on the south side of Milwaukee with umos which is a really a service to immigrants coming to the United States and so for me this program has also been an opportunity to not just talk about the past but also talking with my children about what is it to be Hispanic what is it to think about where we come from and what what are the genetic influences there that are going to inform their health and health care in the future as they move forward in life and that's a very traditional worldview in some way right that we're not just thinking about one generation but we're thinking about this really across time and across multiple Generations as well [Music] thank you Los examples [Music] [Music] Milwaukee Wisconsin mama [Music] is [Music] [Music] la Rosa foreign [Music] important [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] historia [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] so much latiness is a project which focuses on the states unsung heroes meaning our women over the age of 50. the somos Latino digital history project was started in 2012 at the request of Linda Garcia Merchant from the national oral history project known as giganasa you know I was fortunate enough to serve on the somos Latinas advisory committee Tess had invited me to join the group and I was just I really was fascinated by this notion of collecting the stories of older Latina Community activists so I joined immediately Linda Garcia Merchant asked me to consider interviewing a woman and I said we there's more than a woman in Wisconsin who's been a Latina activist so for four years from 2012 till June of 2015. my students in Chicano studies did video interviews and that's now online to the Wisconsin Historical Society in June of 2015 I retired and Eloise and I had already agreed that we would work on a book and since the book was launched in May of 18 we've had requests for presentations and speaking engagements universities non-profits and small groups of women and it's it's really been wonderful because we're being able to gather even more insight into stories as we meet other women across the state this program today and the series of programs are going to follow over the next few years as uh Stepping Stones to help us get there to show that this University is committed not just to latinx students that we are recruiting to our campus but to the larger latinx community of Milwaukee the Wisconsin Historical Society has been a partner and a supporter since the very first day and in fact the videos produced are the first project they put online that means that Community faculty K-12 teachers can access the videos for free use them in a learning environment somewhere down the road I think when the most of the video interviews had been completed that Tess and I were talking and we said you know we really have to create greater awareness now that we've got these wonderful collection of video interviews how do we do that so we were doing some brainstorming and finally we said you know what let's write a book where we're here at Marquette and I don't Envision it slowing down for a bit uh I'd say another year and a half of of people wanting to hear more from our women in the book and the video series Marquette is at uh an interesting opportunity right now to really grow not only its Hispanic serving institution status in other words to grow our student population to 25 latinx students but also to grow our latinx studies program an opportunity for students to understand that their culture their history their memories are part of the larger Stories We Tell about Wisconsin and about the United States the books almost Latinas is a perfect encapsulation of that it took about a hundred and 44 people between community and campus to produce the digital history project and that meant we had 70 over 70 students from my chicanex latinx study courses from 2012 to 2015 who were engaged in producing the videos and I'm tremendously proud of what they produced then when we decided to do that we felt that we needed to further explore what was Community activism from the lens of the Latinas themselves there are so many definitions of what community activism is but we really needed to hear it from their own perspective of what that meant we wanted to explore that further and so the book tries to accomplish that the part that I would like to share with you today was actually when I was Maria Flores I have a few pieces of my life in the book One Piece in particular that I'm real proud of was my involvement in the union the labor movement I've always been pro-labor my husband was in a steward and financial Secretary of UAW 553 how I sometimes I wake up in the morning and I think about their stories and I say you know what they made a difference and you know I can make I can do my part on this as well so when I go to speak because I'm more of a of an introvert than anything else that you know it's like I'm going to do this because there's a story that needs to be told and I really want them to feel the inspiration that I feel if I can tell the stories where I have a sense that they're being inspired then I've done my job people didn't really understand this explosion didn't understand where people were coming from didn't understand their journey and their challenges so I spent a lot of time in that role trying to educate government officials school districts Etc about what Latino immigrants were facing in coming to Wisconsin latinx studies and latinx history is American history and it's important for all of our students whether they are latinx descent or otherwise to understand that this history is part of the history they need to understand to understand who they are as part of the communities they're a part of and to understand the neighbors that call these places home as well and most importantly understand that it's their obligation to take that work outside of the classroom and into the broader Marquette community in looking at why and you know why I think that's as important is is really about you know letting other people know letting the community know who we are what our value is as Latinos and and that we have that value it was important for us to be able to elect an Hispanic candidate and there was an opportunity opportunity presented after the 1990 census in a total we have 43 women profiled through the digital history project and in addition we were able to collect archives for some of the women and that is for TAS and myself one of the reasons why we wrote the book because we had our own personal experiences in the Milwaukee community and realizing that we had changed things up and so it continues to be the case with women still have to find the path for leadership and create that path because it's not always created for us so that was really one reason for me to be involved in this effort it's wonderful that the audience now is able to point to specific women in our communities and I've been very clear from the beginning that it's almost Latinas is the starting point of the important recovery and documentation of latinx history in this state and so we're really proud of of everyone's effort um you know Tess and I are in our latter phase of life as well and so we rightfully ended the book with saying Asia Adelante so onward forward and we really see others you know continuing uh to take on the good work of collecting And archiving the stories of women I think it's almost a function of good fortune that Linda approached me from the national project but also a function of Aging that I have come to appreciate the men and women around me have done on behalf of our communities and I feel honored and so I see that in some way we open a channel for these voices that have been speaking for many years decades about things that need to be corrected and they've achieved great things so the feeling is ah the audience now knows who they are [Music] looking stories foreign thank you [Music] thank you [Music]