WESLACO, RGV - With the 84th legislative session now past the halfway mark, Texas A&M University System governmental affairs staff are working hard on their No. 1 agenda item for South Texas - securing $15 million for the Healthy South Texas 20125 Initiative.
Based on the results of a small pilot program implemented at its Coastal Bend Health Education Center, A&M believes it can reduce preventable diseases by 25 percent in South Texas by the year 2025 through grassroots education and prevention efforts.
The initiative would utilize the expertize of Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, Texas A&M Health Science Center, A&M’s colleges of medicine, nursing, and pharmacy, officials in the biomedical sciences arena, local partners such as hospitals, medical providers and community-based organizations, and the A&M promotoras that work in South Texas border colonias.
Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp is pictured with children at the roll out of the Healthy South Texas 2025 initiative in Corpus Christi.“Almost all of Medicaid costs are preventable, almost all the diseases are preventable,” Texas A&M System Chancellor John Sharp told a dozen or so state legislators, during a visit to the Texas A&M University-Kingsville Citrus Center in Weslaco in late January.
The event at the Citrus Center was part of the Valley Legislative Tour hosted by the Rio Grande Valley Partnership.
“We started a little partnership with Driscoll Hospital in Corpus Christi over the last couple of years to see if we could have an impact on preventable diseases. Based on this we think that we can have a 25 percent reduction in Medicaid costs in a 26 county region as a pilot project, and then spread it over the state,” Sharp said.
“It does not do you much good once somebody goes into a hospital and you treat them for diabetes and you are getting a Medicaid deal. We want to keep the person from going there to begin with. It is the only way we think we can bend those costs.”
Sharp explained what the AgriLife Extension Service does.
“AgriLife researchers go out and figure out better ways to grow cows, better ways to grow sugar cane, better ways to grow all that, and then AgriLife Extension, which is in every county, takes that research and one day, one night, they might be meeting with 600 farmers and say, here is what you plant next year. It is the most efficient research transfer that exists anywhere in the country,” Sharp said.
Sharp said he and his leadership team took a close look at the AgriLife Extension Service’s success with crops and livestock and then posed the question, why can’t they have the same success with human beings?
“Why can't we take our health science center, and the IBT (Institute of Biosciences and Technology) research labs in the medical center, take all that we know about diabetes and what kids are supposed to eat and stuff like that and the night that a bunch of AgriLife folks are meeting with farmers to tell them how to grow crops, we have folks using the same facility to meet with 600 moms to tell them how to grow their kids.”
Sharp said the results of the Coastal Bend pilot project are very encouraging.
“We experimented with that (an education and prevention program) and the curve bent way beyond our beliefs in Corpus Christi. We believe we can make that work and we want to do a pilot project in 25 counties and eventually take it to the rest of the state. It is something that as a former comptroller can get really excited about. We believe we can bend that curve for the very first time and start paying attention to prevention.”
Sharp then gave an example of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery. “Once we have floated it (the Healthy South Texas 2015 Initiative) out there, and Senators Nelson and Hinojosa endorsed it, the Centers for Disease Control issued an RFP (Request for Proposals) one week later saying, hey, anybody want to do this?”
Dr. Rubén Saldaña is administrator for Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service’s District 12. Saldaña pointed out that diabetes costs Texas more than $12 billion a year and affects Hispanics and African Americans in a disproportionately higher way. “The mortality is twice among these groups,” Saldaña said. “Here in the Valley we have about 100,000 residents over 18 with it.”
Saldaña said AgriLife has been involved in prevention work for over 100 years. “We are inspired by the challenge Chancellor Sharp has placed on us - to do the same thing with healthcare education as we have done with Ag education for so many years. We are up for the challenge,” Saldaña said.
Thanks to a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, AgriLife has been able to start gardening programs in Rio Grande City, Saldaña said. “With ten percent of all the food deserts in the Rio Grande Valley it is easy to find bad foods; it is harder to find good foods. It is a lot more expensive. The idea is not so much to provide food but provide education to help people figure out how to grow things on their own, such as with community gardens, mobile markets, and so forth.”
Building on the CDC grant, AgriLife was able to get funding from Health and Human Services to expand the gardening project into Hidalgo and Cameron counties. “We have expanded that into a lot of areas where good food is scarce. Areas where you can go down to a corner store and you can find a lot of stuff that is not real good for you and it is cheap and easy and fast but the price comes down the road,” Saldaña said. “As doctors will tell you, most of what we have to deal with health-wise is self-inflicted and fully preventable.”
Saldaña informed the legislators that Hidalgo County has the dubious honor of having the highest obesity rate in the State of Texas at 43 percent. “So, following those two grants, working with the Texas A&M Health Science Center’s School of Rural Public Health in McAllen, we just started on a $2.4 million grant so that we can try to address that. We feel those are noble efforts and important because they focus on prevention. Once you are in the doctor's office or the hospital you have already fallen way behind.”
Saldaña also informed legislators that around 800 babies are born at Doctors Hospital every month. “Of these, 50 percent of them have no prenatal care the first trimester. When you get to working on that there are lots of kinds of preventable things that we can get ahead of if we can get to those mothers early enough and we teach them what to do with those infants early in life. We call that the Healthy Baby, Healthy Start initiative. We are collaborating with the Health Science Center and its research base. Our agents have their connections with county government and, along with the support of the state we are very excited about this work.”
Editor's Note: In the main picture accompanying this story, Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp, state Rep. Juan Hinojosa, and Dr. Brett Giroir, Chief Executive Officer of the Texas A&M Health Science Center, are pictured at the state Capitol in Austin. They announced the Healthy South Texas 2025 initiative in June, 2014.
