FEATURED, FROM LEFT: Rep. Ryan Guillén, R-Rio Grande City, and his wife, Dalinda Guillén; and Gov. Greg Abbott, on Monday, November 15, 2021, in Floresville, where the state representative announced he had switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.
Photograph Courtesy GOV. GREG ABBOTT FACEBOOK
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Gov. Abbott to attend renaming of DHR’s Health Level One Trauma Center in Edinburg, follow-up on state’s support for hospital system, on Tuesday, September 20, 2022 from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
By DAVID A. DÍAZ
[email protected]
The one-year anniversary of DHR Health being designated a Level One Trauma Center will be celebrated at the Edinburg Conference Center at Renaissance on Tuesday morning, September 20, 2022, during an event in which Gov. Greg Abbott is scheduled to attend.
The Edinburg Conference Center at Renaissance is located at 118 Paseo Del Prado in Edinburg, which is immediately east of the 5500 block of South McColl Road, as part of the DHR Health hospital system.
The governor’s planned visit will allow him to follow up on the state’s support for the hospital system, and to publicly recognize the efforts of renowned surgeon Dr. Kenneth L. Mattox, who helped DHR Health earn the Level One Trauma Center designation.
“The DHR Health executive leadership team is proud to welcome back Dr. Kenneth L. Mattox to our Edinburg hospital campus as we announce the renaming of the Rio Grande Valley’s only Level One Trauma Center in his honor,” said Marcy Martínez, Director of Public Relations and Corporate Communications, DHR Health.
Mattox will be featured during a news conference – also to be held at the Edinburg Conference Center at Renaissance on Tuesday, September 20, 2022 – from 9:30 a.m. to 10:15 a.m.
The governor’s participation is set to take place shortly thereafter, from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
Mattox is a nationally renowned surgeon who has written books and held conferences focuses on trauma medicine.
His is Professor and Vice Chairman of Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine and has been named among the Best Surgeons in America five times.
“Dr. Mattox will be the guest of honor at the press conference scheduled from 9:30 a.m. to 10:15 a.m. on Tuesday, September 20, 2022, for lending his experience and counsel to the DHR Health trauma team as they worked toward the Level One Trauma designation providing them with mentorship, guidance in research and trauma care for individual surgeons and the system as a whole,” Martínez said. “It is a pleasure to put his name on the trauma center he helped build in order to bring the highest level of emergency health care to the residents of the Rio Grande Valley.”
So important for South Texans was DHR Health achieving the Level One Trauma Center designation that Abbott flew down last year – on Wednesday, September 8, 2021 – for a gathering at the Edinburg Conference Center at Renaissance to formally announce that accomplishment, and it’s impact for the 14 South Texas counties that are now being served.
A Level One Trauma Center provides the highest level of surgical care to trauma patients.
The DHR Health Level One Trauma Center is located at its main hospital, 5501 S. McColl Road, Edinburg.
A Level One Trauma Center is a hospital equipped and staffed to provide care for patients suffering from major traumatic injuries that result from falls, motor vehicle collisions, knife or gunshot wounds, or other catastrophes that threaten a person’s life or limbs.
DHR Health is the flagship teaching hospital for the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine and encompasses a general acute hospital with the only dedicated women’s hospital south of San Antonio, a rehabilitation hospital, a behavioral hospital, more than 70 clinics Valley-wide, advanced cancer services, the only transplant program in the Rio Grande Valley – and as of September 8, 2021, the first and only 24/7 Designated Level One Trauma Center south of San Antonio.
On Tuesday, November 16, 2021, Driscoll Health System, in partnership with DHR Health, held a groundbreaking ceremony for Driscoll Children’s Hospital Rio Grande Valley, located at 2820 W. Michelangelo Drive in Edinburg, which is being built on the site of the DHR Health campus, next to DHR Health’s The Women’s Hospital at Renaissance.
The new, independently operated, eight-level pediatric hospital will further the mission of Driscoll Children’s Hospital founder Clara Driscoll to provide medical care to all the children of South Texas. The building is expected to be completed in Spring 2023.
The Driscoll Children’s Hospital Rio Grande Valley represents a combined investment of more than $105 million. Driscoll Children’s Hospital Rio Grande Valley will operate with more than 500 employees, creating significant economic impact and new job opportunities for clinical, ancillary and support staff in the Valley.
Doctors Hospital at Renaissance, Ltd (“DHR”) and its general partner, RGV Med, Inc. (“RGV Med”) own and operate a 519 licensed bed general acute care hospital located at 5501 South McColl in Edinburg. The facility is one of the largest physician-owned facilities in the United States that began as an ambulatory surgery center in 1997.
Mattox is a Distinguished Service Professor at Baylor College of Medicine and Chief of Staff and Surgeon-in-Chief at Ben Taub Hospital, where he has worked since 1973.
Ben Taub Hospital has been at the forefront of surgical critical care, breaking ground with its automated system for the storage and retrieval of laboratory data in 1975.
Mattox helped develop the internationally renowned Ben Taub Hospital Emergency Center and its equally respected Trauma Center. His reputation as an innovator in trauma care is known worldwide.
Mattox is past President of the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma and Secretary-Treasurer of the Michael E. DeBakey International Surgical Society.
He previously chaired the Mayor’s Red Ribbon Committee to address Houston Fire Department Emergency Medical Services, and sat on the Hospital Subcommittee of the Mayor’s Special Task Force on the Medical Aspects of Disaster.
Currently, Mattox serves as consultant to the Center for Biologic Evaluation and Research of the FDA.
Mattox has served on the Board of Directors of the Rotary Club of Houston, Doctors’ Club of Houston, Wayland Baptist University, the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma, the Southeast Texas Trauma Regional Advisory Council, the American College of Surgeons Board of Governors, and serves as Chairman of the Board of the John P. McGovern Museum for Health & Medical Science.
Cognitive impairment in Hispanic adults linked to discrimination experiences
Latino and Black people experience higher rates of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias than non-Hispanic white people, but scientists have never known why.
Now a new study shows that experiences with discrimination may be playing a role in disproportionate experiences of cognitive decline, according to findings released on Monday, September 19, 2022.
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common type of dementia.
Dementia is a general term for loss of memory, language, problem-solving and other thinking abilities that are severe enough to interfere with daily life.
Alzheimer’s disease is is a progressive disease beginning with mild memory loss and possibly leading to loss of the ability to carry on a conversation and respond to the environment. Alzheimer’s disease involves parts of the brain that control thought, memory, and language.
In a first-of-its-kind study, published recently in the journal Social Science & Medicine, researchers from The University of Texas at Austin, University of California, Davis and Florida State University examined 1,100 people between the ages of 23 and 62 living in the United States.
Most of the study participants were born in Mexico, and all of them identified as Latino and/or Hispanic.
Participants were followed for 12 years and were asked about their experiences with perceived discrimination.
Researchers also evaluated the participants’ cognitive function and found those who had reported experiencing more discrimination throughout the study were more likely to have poorer cognitive performance at the end of the study.
Cognitive functions, also called cognitive skills, cognitive abilities or cognitive capacities, are brain-based skills which are needed in acquisition of knowledge, manipulation of information and reasoning. They have more to do with the mechanisms of how people learn, remember, solve problems and pay attention, rather than with actual knowledge. Cognitive skills or functions encompass the domains of perception, attention, memory, learning, decision making, and language abilities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_skill
“It is critical that we identify modifiable risk factors for cognitive decline and impairment,” said Elizabeth Muñoz, Assistant Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences at UT Austin and lead author of the study. “This study shows that experiencing discrimination because of one’s ethnic group or where they were born is a risk factor.”
Previous studies have found higher rates of cognitive decline in minority populations, such as Black and Latino people, when compared with white people.
Other research found associations between discrimination and cognitive impairment in Black adults.
This study is the first to link discrimination to cognitive decline in Latino adults.
Researchers in the study identified differences among study participants along two different trajectories of experiences of discrimination.
One group, identified as Stable Low, experienced lower levels of discrimination but at stable levels over time. Another group was identified as High Declining, experiencing higher levels of discrimination at the beginning of the study and declining over time.
The Stable Low group scored better cognitively than those in the High Decline group, who were more likely to suffer impairment.
At the beginning of the study, 74 percent of participants reported experiencing discrimination sometimes or more often. By the end of the study, 47 percent of participants reported the same thing, showing that experiences of discrimination declined over time.
Researchers controlled for age, education level, baseline IQ scores and language preference.
The study found that those participants who were born in the United States were more likely to be in the High Declining group and more likely to experience cognitive impairment, while those who were born in another country and immigrated were more likely to be in the Stable Low group and less likely to experience cognitive impairment.
“It’s not clear why there appears to be a somewhat protective effect for immigrants,” Muñoz said. “Previous research has shown that acculturation is a risk factor for discrimination. Those born in the United States may be occupying more traditionally white spaces and may encounter discrimination there. It may be that immigrants stick closer to communities of other immigrants. There is a resilience factor among immigrants that deserves further study.”
Richard W. Robins of the University of California, Davis and Angelina R. Sutin of Florida State University also contributed to the research.
The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Center on Aging and Population Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin, the National Institute on Aging, the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
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Esther Robards-Forbes contributed to this article. For more on this and other Texas legislative news stories that affect the Rio Grande Valley metropolitan region, please log on to Titans of the Texas Legislature (TitansoftheTexasLegislature.com).
