The answer is complicated in a neighborhood like Watts, where some people still remember when 103rd Street, which now borders a lively Saturday Farmers Market, was nicknamed “Charcoal Alley” because of the fires that burned buildings to the ground during the Watts Riot of 1965, ReportingonHealth reports:

Many unhealthy conditions persist today that contributed to the powder keg atmosphere in South Los Angeles in the 1960s and again during the Rodney King Riot twenty years ago: high rates of unemployment, poverty and crime. Neighborhood schools continue to battle high dropout rates. Gang violence makes some people reluctant to visit unfamiliar territory — including the Farmers’ Market.

In a neighborhood park on the corner of 103rd and Central Aves., an effort is underway to take steps toward a healthier South L.A.— by providing an affordable and welcoming place to buy fresh produce and to get good advice on nutrition. We took our most recent group of California Endowment Health Journalism Fellows to the Watts Healthy Farmers’ Market to hear from market founders and vendors, who detailed the successes and challenges they’ve encountered since the market opened in July 2007.

Check out a video of the effort here.

New features include:

• MOVE! blog – The latest information on our work and a way for you to stay updated with what’s going on in the field. You can share your stories by commenting on posts.
• Search – A new search function allows you to search all of our resources by keywords or topic areas, including park access, inequality, minorities, and lower-income.
• Audience-specific – We’ve added special pages for advocates, practitioners and policy-makers to help you locate information specific to your work depending on your role in the field.
• Disparities-focused resources – Several resources focus on racial and ethnic minorities and lower-income groups who are at highest risk for obesity and physical inactivity. For example, a research synthesis called “Do All Children Have Places to Be Active? Disparities in Access to Physical Activity Environments in Racial and Ethnic Minority and Lower-Income Communities” pulls together research showing that people of color and lower-income people often live in neighborhoods that do not support walking and biking.

You can also follow Active Living Research on Twitter and Facebook.

Designed specifically for the Latino Community, the La Mesa Completa Pastor’s Toolkit describes federal nutrition assistance programs from the lens of a pastor or community leader interacting with members of their community.

The toolkit includes helpful links, best practices, stories, and even videos of personal testimonies of how federal programs are helping families get the nutrition they need.

Have her sign up for Text4baby, a free bilingual mobile information service that provides pregnant women and new moms with info to help them care for their health and give their babies the best possible start in life.

First, text BABY (or BEBE for Spanish) to 511411.

Once enrolled, women get free weekly text messages timed to either her due date or baby’s date of birth. Messages were developed by government and non-profit health experts, such as the CDC, and cover nutrition, immunization, and birth defect prevention, among other topics.

Text4baby, an educational program of the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition (HMHB), launched two years and has enrolled about 300,000 subscribers and sent more than 28 million text messages. The program has more than 700 outreach partners including MTV and the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy.

Learn more at www.text4baby.org. Follow the effort on Facebook and Twitter.

About 45% of Hispanic patients reported moderate to severe pain, more than twice the percentage of whites (20%) and also more than African Americans (37%).

On some measures, differences were seen between Latino patients who spoke English and those who did not. For example, 64 percent of Spanish-dominant Hispanics reported fatigue, compared with 49 percent of English-dominant Hispanic patients.

Read more about the survey here.

The three-episode videonovela series, being distributed by the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), tells the story of Don Felipe, who has type 2 diabetes and is head of the Jiménez family, and how he is having a problem learning to manage his disease.

Don Felipe, with the support of his family, comes to understand that he needs to speak with his health care team about his treatment options rather than skip his medication because of side effects.

Watch Episodes 1 and 2 online or Facebook.

Episode 3 will be released May 10, 2012.

Nearly 12% of Hispanics age 20 or older had been diagnosed with diabetes.

Find more in Spanish on diabetes here.

IOM Report on Obesity Prevention

America’s obesity epidemic is so deeply rooted that it will take dramatic and systemic measures—from overhauling farm policies and zoning laws to, possibly, introducing a soda tax—to fix it, according to a new report released May 8, 2012, by the influential Institute of Medicine (IOM), Reuters reports.

The 478-page report, according to Reuters, refutes the idea that obesity is largely the result of a lack of willpower on the part of individuals:

Instead, it embraces policy proposals that have met with stiff resistance from the food industry and lawmakers, arguing that multiple strategies will be needed to make the U.S. environment less “obesogenic.”

The IOM, part of the National Academies, offers advice to the government and others on health issues. Its report was released at the Weight of the Nation conference, a three-day meeting hosted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cable channel HBO will air a documentary of the same name next week.

“People have heard the advice to eat less and move more for years, and during that time a large number of Americans have become obese,” committee member Shiriki Kumanyika of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine told Reuters. “That advice will never be out of date. But when you see the increase in obesity you ask, what changed? And the answer is, the environment. The average person cannot maintain a healthy weight in this obesity-promoting environment.”

Earlier this week, a CDC-funded study projected that by 2030, 42% of American adults will be obese, compared to 34% today.

The staggering human toll of obesity-related chronic disease and disability, and an annual cost of $190.2 billion for treating obesity-related illness, underscore the need to strengthen prevention efforts.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation asked the IOM to identify catalysts that could speed progress in obesity prevention. The IOM evaluated prior obesity prevention strategies and identified recommendations to meet the following goals and accelerate progress:

• Integrate physical activity every day in every way
• Make healthy foods available everywhere
• Marketing what matters for a healthy life
• Activating employers and health care professionals
• Strengthening schools as the heart of health

Read the full report. To get involved, go here.

Check out this new infographic about the surprising amounts of TV, video game, computer and other entertainment screen time that children are getting, and the opportunities for physical activity that they are missing out on. The infographic, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also provides tips for healthier activities and ways parents can limit screen time in the home.

Find the infographic here.

For more information, visit MakingHealthEasier.org/GetMoving

The series, launched in October 2011 by the Office of Women’s Health at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, provides consumers and community leaders with access to four video novelas and free health materials about safe medication use, which is vital given that each year thousands of preventable injuries and deaths are caused by improper medication use.

The series follows the lives of main character Lourdes and her family. In each episode, the family faces a problem because they don’t use medicines wisely.

Find more about the campaign in English or Spanish.

Watch all episodes here. When you watch them, ask yourself: What lessons do Lourdes and her family learn about medication safety? How do they handle the challenges?