MISSION, Texas - Dr. Rashmi Chandran, a leading advocate for health equity in the Rio Grande Valley, asked one of the questions at the recent Accelerator 2023 RGV Health Equity Conference.
The conference was co-hosted by Western Governors University and AltaCair and held at Mission Event Center.
Chandran, the new president of the AltaCair Foundation, asked this question:
“I have come from a different country. I've been in the Valley for the last ten years. I came from India. What I see is that there are primarily one or two industries that thrive in RGV. It is usually healthcare and then there is the food industry, right? Those are the two things that come up.
“How can we diversify that and work more on workforce retention? Because there are a lot of people who move here and they leave. And it's because there's limited industries, limited jobs. There are only so many things you can do and that's what our kids learn.
“They only see hospitals around. So do they only become nurses and doctors? How do they get exposed to the fact that there's so much out there? What are the different educational pathways out there?”
Chandran put the question to a panel comprising Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez, UT-Rio Grande Valley Vice President Veronica Gonzales, Texas A&M University Vice President Manny Vela, and Kimberly Kelly-Cortez, senior associate dean and director of programs at WGU’s Leavitt School of Health.
Here is a video recording of the response from the four panelists:
https://youtu.be/Ihcqy0SiE_I
In their program notes, Western Governors University and AltaCair explained why they co-hosted the recent Accelerator 2023 RGV Health Equity Conference.
“The research-backed program leverages the power of coopetition (collaboration with competitors, thought leadership, and action-oriented mindset to drive discussions around the socio-economic and environmental factors contributing to health disparities.
“The investment coaches health systems, community-based organizations, accountable care organizations, workforce entities, and education alliances into a policy and advocacy group.
“The vision is to think beyond geographical borders and develop a scalable model, with replicable results, to optimize the overall health equity structure of rural America.”
The key themes for discussion at Accelerator 2023, which was held at the Mission Event Center, were:
The program pointed out that, according to the US Census Bureau, 9.8 percent of people under the age of 65 do not have health insurance nationwide, but the percentages for the four poorest counties in the RGV are much higher:
