The first United States Agency for International Development (USAID) binational project in health is in full swing at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and The University of Tamaulipas, Mexico (UAT).

The TIES Program is establishing training, internships, exchange and scholarship between the Health Science Center School of Medicine and the UAT School of Medicine. One of UAT’s branches is at Reynosa, across the border from McAllen.

Tina Fields, Ph.D., M.P.H., interim director of the Center for South Texas Programs, administers the federal grant that supports TIES.
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Garcia, partners were instrumental in obtaining federal grant
The Center for South Texas Programs, directed by Tina Fields, Ph.D., M.P.H., of the Health Science Center, administers the USAID grant. The TIES Program is the result of four years of dedicated work by the Center for South Texas Programs and its late director, Richard Garcia, and by UAT officials with support from the consul of Mexico at McAllen, Luis Lopez Moreno.

The first TIES course was conducted this summer along the Texas-Mexico border in the communities of Laredo and Nuevo Laredo, McAllen and Reynosa, and Harlingen, Brownsville and Matamoros. The course gave UAT health professional students the chance to learn from Health Science Center faculty, as well as experts from the U.S. Border Patrol, health departments and other border institutions. The students also interacted with visiting public health interns participating in a Health Science Center elective, the South Texas Environmental Education and Research (STEER) Program.

Three students from The University of Tamaulipas, Mexico, prepare to give presentations at a luncheon celebrating the completion of the TIES program this summer.

Focus on border health issues
TIES orientation was held in June at UAT in Reynosa. Fourteen UAT students spent two months attending courses at the Health Science Center’s campuses in Harlingen, Laredo and San Antonio. Course work focused on border health issues such as drug-resistant tuberculosis; zoonoses (transmission of infections from animals to humans); nutrition, obesity and diabetes; a coyote rabies vaccination program; water, soil and air pollution; life in colonias; and others.

The STEER Program, directed by Claudia Miller, M.D., M.S., provides environmental medicine rotations and is a logical starting point for the TIES Program to introduce UAT students to environmental issues. Through the TIES Program, UAT has established a Master of Infectious Diseases Degree with emphasis on tuberculosis, one of the most significant border health issues.

A united effort to improve the region’s health
A concept of one border, one people and one collaborative health care system on both sides of the Rio Grande has been the driving philosophy behind TIES from the start, Dr. Fields said.

“The challenge was to find out what our neighbors across one ‘little bitty river’ were doing,” she said. “Truly our partners in Mexico drove the idea of a master’s degree program in infectious diseases with an emphasis on tuberculosis. The goal is the prevention, diagnosis and control of TB and other infectious diseases.”

A profitable summer for UAT students
Anabel Bocanegra, M.D., M.M.S., who leads the UAT Health Science Academic Body of Biological Sciences, said its professors conduct research in basic, clinical and epidemiological investigation of infectious disease and in molecules with biological activity. She said the summer course was a tremendous experience for UAT students. “It was very profitable – exceeded our expectations,” Dr. Bocanegra said. “On behalf of the faculty and staff of UAT, thank you.”

Dr. Bocanegra spoke along with the 14 UAT students at an August luncheon at the Health Science Center’s Central Campus in San Antonio. She said the TIES Program will increase “the interaction of universities, the birth of new ideas and knowledge leading to a better quality of life.”

Strength of partners key to long term
Paula Winkler, TIES project coordinator who wrote the original TIES grant proposal, said the team is devoted to sustaining the project through connections with many centers, including the Heartland National Tuberculosis Center based in San Antonio and Tyler.

Many of the UAT students voiced the one border, one people theme. “We share the water, the air, the land,” Lilia Caro said, adding that illnesses do not stop at the border. “We are obligated to work together. What separates us is a river, yet it does not separate us but unites us.”

For more information, please contact Will Sansom at (210) 567-2579.

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The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio is the leading research institution in South Texas and one of the major health sciences universities in the world. With an operating budget of $536 million, the Health Science Center is the chief catalyst for the $14.3 billion biosciences and health care sector in San Antonio’s economy. The Health Science Center has had an estimated $35 billion impact on the region since inception and has expanded to six campuses in San Antonio, Laredo, Harlingen and Edinburg. More than 22,000 graduates (physicians, dentists, nurses, scientists and allied health professionals) serve in their fields, including many in Texas. Health Science Center faculty are international leaders in cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, aging, stroke prevention, kidney disease, orthopaedics, research imaging, transplant surgery, psychiatry and clinical neurosciences, pain management, genetics, nursing, allied health, dentistry and many other fields.