HARLINGEN, Texas – Veteran broadcaster Ron Whitlock, of Ron Whitlock Reports, recently met up with Dr. Jose Manuel De La Rosa, MD, a member of the U.S.-Mexico Border Health Commission.
The meeting took place at the Texas Medical Association’s 2023 Border Health Conference, which was held at the Harlingen Convention Center.
Whitlock was intrigued to know more about the U.S.-Mexico Border Health Commission, an entity that does not get a lot of media attention.
De La Rosa, who is based in El Paso, said the Border Health Commission does important work. Asked to give an example, De La Rosa said:
“We talk about the Healthy Border 2030 initiative. It is a process. It takes literally years to get those recommendations (into statute). But those recommendations are established in a format and then the bureaucracy goes to work. When there’s an opportunity for funding and they look at equal funding for the border for different areas.
“But, where do you begin to allocate funds and why? Oh yeah, somebody somewhere (the U.S.-Mexico Border Health Commission) has an official recommendation here to spend more money on, say, dust cessation, or diabetes, and it trickles through the system.
“Mexico is the same way. When you have these bodies of people making recommendations officially through a national and international treaty, it is the law and if nothing else, the bureaucrats in Washington and in Mexico City, understand bureaucracy and move it forward.”
The Commission was created as a binational health commission in July 2000 with the signing of an agreement by the Secretary of Health and Human Services of the United States and the Secretary of Health of México.
In 2004, the Commission was designated as a Public International Organization by Executive Order of the President. That is when De La Rosa was first appointed, by President George W. Bush.
“I would say the most important thing that it (the U.S.-Mexico Border Health Commission ) does is allow communication to be formalized because whether you’re in D.C. or D.F., whether you’re in Washington, or in Mexico City, whether you’re in Los Pinos or in the White House, you don’t understand the border.
“You don’t understand that we’re two sovereign countries but one community and I think the commission lives, breathes, eats and truly truly represents that. We’re two countries. We’re sovereign, we have our rights, and we’re one community and so we need to talk to each other formally and constantly.”
Here is an audio recording of Ron Whitlock’s conversation with Dr. Jose Manuel De La Rosa:
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