Commentaries at the San Antonio Report provide space for our community to share perspectives and offer solutions to pressing local issues. The views expressed in this commentary belong to the author alone.
Imagine being a child who loses the wise guidance of her 54-year-old diabetic grandmother to heart, liver or another deadly disease. Think about the young mother who will miss the child development mentoring of her own mother who passed at 49. Many on San Antonio’s South Side don’t have to imagine.
In fact, a disproportionate number of young grandparents died during the COVID pandemic. Without significant interventions, the grieving children could also become diabetics and might require limb amputations as early as their 30s and 40s.
When the 356-bed Texas Vista Medical Center closed in May of 2023 the South Side lost essential hospital services including emergency room, maternity and mental health specialties. The resulting vacuum further jeopardizes the existing medical services. With no hospital in the area, some primary and allied medical services are closing offices. Unfortunately, the recent private hospital systems’ announcements of new investments in suburban growth areas suggest the underserved South Side is not part of their long-term plans.
We cannot accept the consequences of losing essential 24-hour hospital service. For example, we know that limb amputations doubled for SAVE Clinic patients after TVMC closed. It was where many went after work to treat foot and hand infections before gangrene set in. Response measures such as urgent and emergency care centers and increasing EMT services to distant hospital care are helpful measures, but they do not solve the fundamental problem. The gap is so wide that only a comprehensive, multi-generational, visionary initiative will help close it. We must do this to be true to our designation as a compassionate city.
A hopeful future
As we move ahead, we must consider five major health equity principles for assuring sustained economic progress for Southside residents and all of greater San Antonio and South Texas.
- Assure that all residents have access to a quality living environment including safe, stable, sustainable housing leading to healthy lives for all, from infants to elders.
- Access to quality education for children and career training for youth and adults.
- Reasonable access to healthy food sources, recreational areas such as parks, service amenities and convenient transportation.
- Resilient infrastructure of utilities, streets, sidewalks and drainage providing healthy environmental conditions.
- Reasonable access to first-class health care services from primary care to specialty hospitals staffed by resolute personnel, who understand their neighbors’ health care needs.
Thankfully there is emerging Southside economic growth with new advanced manufacturing jobs and major housing and commercial development in progress. The area is also experiencing more near-shoring freight movement as the South Texas Triangle Gateway to Mexico, our nation’s number one trading partner.
We are finally ready for a collaborative effort dedicated to extending shortened life spans. Local leaders aware of the personal and economic consequences of long-term neglect are committing to collaboratively addressing health equity.
Center for Health Equity in South Texas
Thanks to our colleagues on the City Council, we now have seed funds for a standalone nonprofit corporation dedicated to this effort. The Center for Health Equity in South Texas (CHEST) is s dedicated to advancing the health outcomes for residents of the greater South San Antonio area, through increased education, access to care, investment and cross-sector collaboration.
The center’s vision is a comprehensive and innovative ecosystem for health that secures the financial and intellectual investments to successfully close the life expectancy gap and achieve health equity in greater South San Antonio and South Texas.
It is guided by the belief that underserved residents face vast health inequities that must be overcome, but they possess a legacy of strength, resiliency and support for one another. CHEST knows the South Side needs a major initiative outside of the existing infrastructure that is nimble, innovative, and technically savvy — and aims to make a forward-looking approach the core of the initiative, emphasizing the use of emerging technologies, innovative processes and service procedures.
And essential to its success, full community collaboration must be at the center of this initiative’s existence, with active support of all sectors from public to private to community residents.
Target goals
The enormous health inequities require major financial and intellectual investments to close the life expectancy gap successfully. The game plan targets three major goals for achieving health equity: increase Southside health care services, including hospital beds, anchored, but not limited to the former TVMC area with complementary nodes throughout medically underserved areas; raise life expectancy via systematic public health-guided improvements in the essential nonmedical social determinants of health and generate a large pipeline of Southside residents enrolled in professional level medical and allied health career educational programs with the aim of providing culturally responsive services in their own underserved communities.
Objectives and corresponding strategies are in development for each goal. For example, we are in active discussions with the South Bexar School Superintendents to help them increase their programs preparing students for entering professional health career programs and with UT Health for a Southside medical student health clinic.
As we look forward to 2025 with its challenges and opportunities, we are reminded of all those who have seen more than their share of losses. Consequently, we are committed to work hard to close the health equity gap. The journey will be filled with barriers and naysayers that we must be prepared to overcome. Yet no matter how difficult the task we are committed to the Cesar Chavez/Dolores Huerta motto:
Si se puede. Yes, it can be done.
