Cayla Palmer, HBHE Student
March 5, 2019
In a few weeks, my classmates and I will be traveling to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. The counties that we will be working in are on the United States-Mexico border, and have been in the spotlight the last few weeks with the conversations around building a border wall. I have never been to Texas, and although my grandmother hails from Mexico City, I've also never been to Mexico. This trip will be the closest I've ever been to my family's home - so close, and yet, so far removed from the experiences the individuals on the border face every day. When I first began doing research on the region and the health issues that individuals living in the area face, I wasn't sure what to expect. All I knew about the communities that live on the border was what I had seen in the news, which was surely not the most accurate snapshot of the lives of the individuals who live there.
As an undergraduate History major, I have always been interested in the history of places and communities. When we first began learning about Texas, we learned that the fluidity of the border for many families in this region was the norm. For every city in Texas along the border, there is almost always a parallel city in Mexico on the other side of the border. Many people have family on either side of the border, and crossing back and forth was a regular occurence. As time has shifted and the border has become more and more political, these families have been affected in an increasingly negative way.
I learned that the border has had a lasting impact on the health of the individuals who occupy its surrounding regions. Some of these counties have the highest rates of untreated diabetes, teen pregnancy, and uninsurance in the country. Despite being noted as one of the areas that needed the Affordable Care Act the most, many of the individuals living along the border either still lack the information they need to receive insurance and good health care, or they were intentionally excluded because of their immigration status.
Over spring break my team and I will be working with the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Medical School on their project Healthy Families. We will be working to understand the best health messaging strategies to increase use of prenatal and preconception care in Hidalgo County. Many women do not present to providers until birth, and infant mortality rates are higher in the region because of this. It will be important for us to understand the many barriers that the women face when seeking care in order to determine the best way to reach out to them. I am excited to work with the community and figure out the best strategies that work for them; we will be holding focus groups with women from the community in order to gain a better understanding of their needs. As public health students and professionals, it's important for us to consider the many social determinants that have an impact on an individual's health, and this will be especially important for me and my group as we seek to understand the barriers to prenatal care that these women face.
I'm excited to aid the community we'll be working with in any way I can, but I'm also nervous. Part of this stems from the fact that I'm Hispanic, but this trip will be the closest I've ever been to the country that my family hails from. The looming idea of a Wall is something that affects my family and I on a daily basis. I have family members in Mexico that I haven't seen in over 10 years. I'll be so close to my family's home, but I can't help but feel nervous about being so far removed from the issues that the communities I'll be serving face outside of what I hear on the news. I could study the history of this region for as long as I wanted to, but nothing will teach me more about what the people on either side of the border experience better than actually serving in the region and truly getting a better understanding of the communities that live there. Part of me is excited to be so close to my family's home, part of me is nervous to be working with communities that face a problem my family and I think about every day but never experience, and part of me is hopeful to progress the health of a region that has been neglected for far too long.
