Coastal Bend Health Education Center

The Coastal Bend Health Education Center's Diabetes Education Program is pioneering highly effective diabetes education for the citizens of South Texas.

The center's Continuing Medical Education (CME) program offers educational opportunities to more than 800 physicians who reside in the center's 19-county service area. The program offers a variety of annual conferences, as well as an ongoing educational series for various specialties.

CBHEC also is striving to make recruitment of students into Health Careers a coordinated regional effort in which CBHEC, Coastal Bend and Valley high schools, and Texas A&M Health Science Center's professional schools work together to increase the number of health professionals in the area.

School of Rural Public Health - McAllen

The Integrated Health Outreach System (IHOS) is a project of the School of Rural Public Health in McAllen. IHOS has trained 14 promotoras since the project began, opened clinics in Alton and San Carlos, established a transportation system to get colonias residents to the clinics or referral sites, and has also facilitated partnerships among several health entities.

The HSC's School of Rural Public Health in McAllen is working closely with the Texas Engineering Experiment Station and South Texas Community College to develop relationships and linkages between higher education and the business community for targeted regional advanced training. Other agreements include a memorandum of understanding with South Texas Community College (STCC) and the College of Medicine to develop a program for qualified STCC students to be admitted to the College of Medicine upon completing the pre-med program in McAllen. A formal memorandum of understanding with El Milagro Clinic is in place to enter joint grant-funded projects oriented toward community medicine.

The School of Rural Public Health's Diabetes Consortium Grant with the Texas Department of Health screens patients in underserved areas for diabetes. Diabetes, dubbed the "family disease of the 21st Century," has an impact on 30 percent of the Texas border population. The school's annual Diabesity in Children and the Family Conference is one of the ongoing projects at the School of Rural Public Health that is seeking to address the disease and its prevalence in the Rio Grande Valley.