Federal Contracts
A new Federal Procurement Center, funded by the Minority Business Development Agency, is designed to enhance opportunities for minority businesses to get access to federal contracts. Executive Director Joseph Montes, who previously led the Small Business Administration?s 8a Program, says the center?s motto is ?Coaching, connecting and assistance in closing the deal.? The center will provide the tools needed to better understand the federal procurement processes, provide access to the contracts and provide the on-the-ground advocacy needed to help minority businesses win. It will supplement the other 40 centers funded by MBDA around the country. The federal government is the nation?s biggest buyer of services. ?
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Project Health
CVS/pharmacy launched Project Health to deliver free health screenings to multicultural communities. The program offers an array of comprehensive health-risk assessments and screenings during disease-specific national health awareness months from National Heart Month (February), National Minority Health Month (April), National Immunization Awareness Month (August), National Dental Hygiene Month (October) and National Diabetes Month (November). Events are scheduled for Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and at CVS/pharmacy locations in Puerto Rico. Medical personnel will provide diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol and osteoporosis screenings and referrals for mammograms and Pap smears, and will examine patients for oral care issues.
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Culturally Irrelevant
University of Missouri researchers found that minority adults who received exercise interventions increased their physical activity levels, but these interventions are not culturally tailored to best assist minority opulations in improving overall health. The researchers analyzed more than 100 studies that tested exercise interventions in 21,151 participants from minority populations. In the majority of interventions for African-Americans, for example, there was no evidence that African-Americans helped design the study, recruit participants or deliver the programs, the researchers said. The study, ?Physical Activity Interventions with Healthy Minority Adults: Meta-Analysis of Behavior and Health Outcomes,? was funded by a more than $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.
Science and Technology Directory
The African Scientific Institute, based on Oakland, Calif., published the third edition of Black Achievers in Science and Technology, ASI Fellows Directory. The 8.5-by-11 inch directory lists more than 470 contemporary notable Black men and women who have significantly contributed to developments in the world of science and technology. Funds raised through the sale of the directory are used to support the ASI Fellows International Program and the ASI Fellows network, providing mixers through which scientists, technologists, educators, other professionals, parents and children can network.
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Eagle Academy for Young Men?
The Eagle Academy for Young Men says it will expand its network of schools into Newark, N.J., this fall. Eagle schools, currently located in New York City?s Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens boroughs, comprises traditional public schools committed to tackling the crisis affecting inner-city young men, particularly young men of color. The Academy says entrenched poverty, high unemployment, low graduation rates, excessively high rates of incarceration and a lack of active fathers and role models, combined with ineffective educational approaches are robbing these young men of their true promise. Eagle Academy schools feature small class sizes and a rigorous academic curriculum with an emphasis on college prep, a vibrant parent engagement program and a mentoring program focused on exposure to professional male role models.?
African-Americans in Medicine
The Aetna Foundation awarded a $210,000 grant to Tour for Diversity in Medicine, a new initiative founded by former medical school students to provide college students of color with information and?advice to plan for careers in medicine and dentistry. The initiative is a project of Hip
Hop Health Inc. that seeks to educate, inspire and cultivate future physicians of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds by forming local
connections. The inaugural tour took 11 doctors, dentists and medical school students to five Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the South, providing premedical enrichment activities. Minority populations comprise more than 26 percent of the U.S. population, African-Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans combined represent only about 6 percent of practicing physicians and 5 percent of dentists.
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Hispanic Students
The United States Hispanic Leadership Institute launched its 2012 Student Leadership Series, challenging more than 40,000 students in 40 cities in 30 states to stay in school, improve their academic performance, graduate and pursue postsecondary education or training. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. serves as the title sponsor of the series. The launch featured former NASA astronaut Jos? Hern?ndez, Ph.D., whose application to NASA initially was rejected several times. The Leadership Series is designed to help students in middle school transition into high school, help students in high school transition into postsecondary education or training, and help students in college transition into graduate school or a career. The goal is to create a Latino community in which every household has a first-time high school graduate, or a first-time college student a first-time college graduate.??
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Unequal Pay
Women in the United States earn 77 percent for each dollar earned annually by men and 82 percent of each dollar earned weekly, according to the Institute for Women?s Policy Research. The institute says women have lower median earnings than men in all but one of the 20 most common occupations for women, bookkeeping and auditing clerks, where women and men have the same median earnings. In one of the 20 most common male occupations, stock clerks and order fillers, women out-earned men by 3 percent of median male earnings. Women working as property, real estate, and community association managers face the largest gender earnings gap of all occupations. In 2011 their median full-time weekly earnings were only 61 percent of men in that occupation, $728 compared to $1201 per week. Among the 20 most common occupations for women, financial managers face the largest earnings gap ($991 compared to $1,504, an earnings ratio of 65.9 percent). Women who are chief executives face the largest earnings gap ($1,464 per week earned by women compared to $2,122) in the 20 most common occupations for men. The institute says discrimination in who gets hired for the best jobs hits all women, but particularly
Black and Hispanic women.
