MISSION, Texas - Keith Smith, senior vice president at Western Governor’s University’s Leavitt School of Health, says his university will continue to help the Rio Grande Valley.
In partnership with AltaCair, WGU recently hosted the Accelerator 2023 RGV Health Equity Conference at the Mission Event Center.
“Not everybody came today that we would like to have seen here. But, it's really important for us to share that this isn't a one and done. This is an event that's going to catalyze other things happening,” Smith told the Rio Grande Guardian International News Service.
Smith said Edwin F. Estevez, co-founder and principal at AltaCair and market president at Prominence Health, is “knocking it out of the park” in the Rio Grande Valley. “We want to be just a part of facilitating that,” Smith said.
Smith has not been at the Leavitt School of Health for long. However, he is very impressed.
“One of the things that attracted me to this university - and I've been here nine months - is every organization has a mission statement. Hardly any organization lives it. Western Governors University is about changing lives for the better through creating a path that is so in sync with what needs to happen here in health car
e that’s what we're investing in.”
The key themes for discussion at Accelerator 2023 were:
A program produced for the event 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:
To learn more about the conference, Rio Grande Guardian International News Service reporters Steve Taylor and Patricia Martinez interviewed four of the key players at the conference:
The audio recording below is the third in a four-part series on the conference:
