Talking rapidly in a Puerto Rican accent, health advocate Aida Giachello said that the longer Latinos live in the United States, the less healthy they become.
Speaking Friday afternoon in the Dunlop Auditorium as part of Latino Heritage Month, Giachello addressed the factors leading to the social and health disparities among Latinos.
She stressed that the process of acclimatization to American culture without reasonable income and health care puts immigrants at special risk.
"Socioeconomic status is one of the most powerful predictors of health," she said.
According to Giachello, only 10 percent of the Latino population has a bachelor's degree and unemployment among Latinos is double that of non-Latinos.
"The tendency is to blame the victim," she said.
Since many Latinos live in poverty, they lack health insurance and access to health care. Many, Giachello said, simply do not know where to go to receive health care.
If Latinos do get access to health care, the structure of care creates difficulties. Not only can there be cultural and linguistic barriers hindering Latino access to health care, but Giachello also said that there is discrimination within the health care system across "virtually every" health-care discipline.
Yet Giachello said the discrimination is most likely unintentional.
"How could well-meaning and highly educated health professionals ... create a discriminatory environment?" Giachello asked.
She attributes this trend to unconscious stereotyping of Latinos as lazy, violent, unintelligent and welfare-dependent.
To address the problem of health disparity within the Latino population, "we must treat the origins rather than the symptoms or conditions that result."
She presented ideas such as addressing the socioeconomic status, nutrition, public health, sanitation and living conditions of Latinos.
Giachello founded the Midwest Latino Health, Research, Training and Policy Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago 12 years ago.
Time magazine named her one of the top 25 most influential Hispanics in the U.S.
"I read the Time article and think it's so great that [Giachello] could come to Penn," said Teresita Hurtado, program director of La Casa Latina and a graduate of the Penn School of Social Policy and Practice.
The seminar was "more eye-opening than I thought," said first-year Pharmacology student Marissa Martinez. "I have a better sense that [Latino health disparity] is a problem."
