Salud: A Latina's Guide to Total Health

Rating:
Summary: Latina Health
Review: The author lists many reasons for this necessity of this book. Until recently, few statistics were collected about Latino health concerns. When concerns were listed for women, they were based on white women. When concerns are listed for minority women, they are usually based upon African-American women. Further, Delgado noted that many Latinas are unfamiliar with the Anglo-American health care system, partially due to its cost. So many Latinas gather health knowledge by word of mouth. She wants this book to be a user-friendly resource.

The book is divided into many timely topics, such as diet, diabetes, depression, and HIV/AIDS. She usually starts chapters with anecdotes from Latinas and ends them with a list of resources and national organizations or helplines. Delgado promotes a holistic approach in which concerns of the mind and heart are mixed in with concerns that are usually proscribed as just related to the body. She emphasizes health problems which disproportionately affect Latinas. While she compares Latinas to women of other races, I didn't see a single statistic that compared them to LatinO men. Hopefully, a LatinO expert will produce a male equivalent to this book.

I am somewhat surprised that a Ph.D. wrote this, rather than an M.D. I am almost sure the book would have been different if written by a different expert. The pages are made of cheap brown paper which I am sure was done to make the text affordable; it's a lengthy book. Spanish phrases are thrown around, but this is a substantially English text, not a bilingual one. However, a Spanish translation is available.

I think this book would be a great resource for Latinas with children. It's user-friendly which some readers may feel is dumbed-down. However, hopefully most readers will find this a useful text when they want to get some easy information about pressing health problems affecting a sizeable and growing part of the American population. Doctors and librarians in predominantly Latino neighborhoods should make sure they have this book available for their patients and patrons, respectively.