From harmful carbon to useful products

It’s the last week of Hispanic Heritage Month, a chance to look at inequities in health care and how we can overcome them. Plus, how synbio is removing greenhouse gas emissions and creating better products. (512 words, 2 minutes, 33 seconds)

Hispanic Heritage Month puts spotlight on health inequities

Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15-Oct. 15) is a chance to recognize the cultural contributions of the Hispanic community, as well as the challenge of inequity in health care.

Inequities in coverage: Hispanics have the highest uninsured rates of any racial or ethnic group in the United States—49.9%, says the Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health.

COVID amplified disparities: COVID-19 was the #1 cause of death for U.S. Hispanics in 2021. Hispanics were more likely than white Americans to have been hospitalized with COVID, and a U.S. Census survey in August found Hispanic respondents most likely to report long COVID symptoms.

Health care barriers for Hispanics include higher levels of poverty, especially among recent immigrants, as well as language and cultural barriers, says Pew Research. Among immigrants, there is also a fear that visiting a doctor could lead to deportation, according to a report.

The greatest public health threat for the U.S. Hispanic community is “the fear, suspicion, mistrust of a public health system that we as immigrants sense is so marginalizing that we don’t utilize it,” Julissa Soto, CEO of Julissa Soto Latino Health Equity Consulting, told Bio.News in a recent interview.

What can be done: “Public health has to be willing to validate the Latino culture and authentically engage people so that they can overcome the past barriers of mistrust. With that, the Latino community can begin to build a culture of health in their communities that is of their making,” Soto says. 

More Reading in Bio.News: This Hispanic Heritage Month comes with opportunities, challenges, and a chance to reflect

More Health News: 

Amgen: Amgen completes acquisition of Horizon Therapeutics
“Today marks an exciting milestone as we welcome Horizon employees to Amgen and begin working together to serve even more patients around the world suffering from serious illnesses,” said Amgen Chairman and CEO Robert A. Bradway on Friday.

How synbio turns harmful carbon into useful goods

A biomanufacturing process that transforms waste carbon into a raw material for manufacturing will get a boost from Ginkgo Bioworks’ digital platform to rapidly discover new enzymes.

The process: Utilizing BIO member Ginkgo Bioworks’ enzyme discovery platform, Ensovi is developing biomanufacturing to turn carbon from industrial processes into Acetyl-CoA, a raw material in products like flavorings, supplements, pharmaceuticals, and even fuels.

Why it matters: This process has the potential to make chemical production carbon neutral or carbon negative.

How it works: Ginkgo’s platform crunches a database of 2 billion genes with machine learning to discover new enzymes and essentially program biology, enabling high-speed discovery of breakthroughs.

Other recent applications for Ginkgo’s platform range from baby formula that’s closer to mother’s milk, to using fungal biomass to make a richer and tastier animal-free meat, to working with U.S. intelligence researchers to enable rapid detection of bioweapons.

What they’re saying: “Synthetic biology can contribute to cutting emissions and removing greenhouse gasses and already is,” said Jennifer Wipf, SVP of Commercial at Ginkgo Bioworks, at the BIO International Convention.

President Biden’s Monday: No official events scheduled. The war in Israel creates special challenges for the president, CNN reports.

What’s Happening on Capitol Hill: The House of Representatives returns this week to elect a Speaker to replace Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). The Senate is in recess.