Latino children's health and the family-community health promotion model

A majority of Latino children in the US live in poverty. However, unlike ot her poor children, Latino children do not seem to have a consistent associa tion between poverty and poor health. Instead, many poor Latino children ha ve unexpectedly good health outcomes. This has been labeled an epidemiologi c paradox. This paper proposes a new model of health, the family-community health promotion model, to account for this paradox. The family-community h ealth promotion model emphasizes the family-community milieu of the child, in contrast to traditional models of health. In addition, the family-commun ity model expands the outcome measures from physical health to functional h ealth status, and underscores the contribution of cultural factors to funct ional health outcomes. In this paper, we applied the family-community healt h promotion model to four health coutcomes: low birthweight, infant mortali ty, chronic and acute illness, and perceived health status. The implication s of this model for research and policy are discussed.