PA program Director Judith E. Colver, M.M.S., P.A.-C., said the Health Science Center program was conceived to provide physician assistants to the underserved and diverse area of South Texas.
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ALEXANDRIA, VA (Oct. 27, 2007) — The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio Department of Physician Assistant (PA) Studies recently received the Excellence Through Diversity Award from the Physician Assistant Education Association (PAEA) at its annual education forum in Tucson, Ariz.

To be honored in this category, a PA program had to show outstanding commitment to and implementation of specific strategies and activities designed to foster the diversity of physician assistant program faculty, staff and student body, and demonstrate an average of 90 percent underrepresented minority retention over the last five years.

Physician assistants are licensed health professionals who practice medicine as members of a team with their supervising physicians. PAs deliver a broad range of medical and surgical services to diverse populations in rural and urban settings. As part of their comprehensive responsibilities, PAs conduct physical exams, diagnose and treat illnesses, order and interpret tests, counsel on preventive health care, assist in surgery and prescribe medications.

Judith E. Colver, M.M.S., P.A.-C., director of the UT Health Science Center program, accepted the award. As part of its application, program leaders reported that the Health Science Center program was heavily invested in educating and training its students to be culturally sensitive to and knowledgeable about the needs of the people of South Texas, a mostly rural and underserved area with a very large minority population.

“This award shows the commitment we’ve made to South Texas,” Colver said. “Our bachelor’s degree program started in 2000 specifically to provide more health professionals for the underserved area of South Texas. Since then, the program evolved into a three-year master’s degree program and is listed among the top 20 physician assistant programs in the nation. The core of our program is diversity and is a mission we embrace and continue to develop.”

As part of its activities to promote diversity, the Health Science Center PA program developed a course entitled “Cultural Issues in Health,” which provides its students with an overview of the diversity of the population and its impact on health and health care delivery in South Texas. The course also addresses such issues as culture, language, literacy, socioeconomic status and complementary and alternative medicine, with an emphasis on San Antonio and the region. The program also exposes its students to medical Spanish.

A community medicine service project is the program’s master’s degree capstone activity. Several imaginative projects were undertaken by the students, including:

• Women Standing Strong, a two-year student initiative to teach women of all ages about osteoporosis and its prevention. Classes were taught in both English and Spanish at South Texas sites ranging from San Antonio to Laredo


• Bienestar, an endeavor directed at fourth-grade students in a predominantly Hispanic school in San Antonio to develop healthy lifestyles and reduce the incidence of diabetes. Schoolchildren were given monthly sessions on diet, exercise and diabetes awareness and a monthly newsletter with healthy recipes, games and learning activities to be shared with their parents


• PAVE (PAs for Violence Education), in which four PA students developed a month-long, after-school program that was implemented at a community center in South San Antonio. The program culminated in a community health fair, the painting of a mural on the wall of the community center and the arrival en masse of the group Bikers Against Child Abuse to reinforce the nonviolent theme.

The Department of PA Studies has recently developed a distance education site to increase the educational opportunities for the citizens of South Texas. And a cohort of PA students who began the program this fall will complete two of the three years of the program at the Laredo Campus Extension. Laredo is 90 to 95 percent Hispanic and many of its residents could not otherwise leave the area to become PAs.

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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 industry, the leading 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.

The Physician Assistant Education Association (PAEA) was established in 1972 and is the only national organization in the United States representing PA educational programs. PAEA’s mission is to pursue excellence, foster faculty development, advance the body of knowledge that defines quality education and patient-centered care, and promote diversity in all aspects of PA education. The Association aims to fulfill its mission through providing an array of services for PA programs, faculty, students, and the general public.