History
	Richard Garcia, Founder
	Mission
	Goals
	Demographics

The South Texas AHEC, has been assigned administrative, fiscal, and programmatic responsibility for a number of remote South Texas/Mexico Border educational and clinical training programs of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. The Center for South Texas Programs is committed to improving the health status and quality of life for residents of South Texas. As part of that mission, the CSTP works closely with its community partners in areas relating to health, education, needs assessments, and capacity building.

PRIMARY CARE EDUCATION AND TRAINING PROGRAMS
AHEC programs are conducted at many sites in South Texas. Clinical rotations at these sites provide students, residents, and postgraduates with a positive impression of primary care, ambulatory medicine, and professional opportunities available to them in rural and medically underserved communities.

Click on programs listed below for more information.

Locally Based Health Professional Academic Programs   Continuing Education   Health Education/Promotion   Recruitment & Training of Future Health Professional   Library and Information Services   Telecommunications   Community Empowerment
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South Texas is comprised of 38 counties south and west of San Antonio to the Texas-Mexico Border (see map). This region of Texas encompasses almost 50,000 square miles and is home to over 3 million people. Thirty-four of these counties have been defined as Medically Underserved Areas, all or in part,, by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, confirming that significant number of residents in the South Texas region lack access to even basic health care.

In response to the need for improved health service delivery expressed by health care professionals and community leaders in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA) made application and was awarded an AHEC grant in 1990. The initial three-year award established an AHEC Program Office at UTHSCSA in San Antonio and a Center Office in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. It also supported the implementation of community-based clinical training programs in medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, and allied health sciences.

Since then, additional Centers have been established in Laredo (Mid Rio Grande Border AHEC), Del Rio (Winter Garden Border AHEC), Corpus Christi (South Coastal AHEC), and San Antonio (South Central AHEC). Because the health care needs of each of these regions differ, the AHEC program looks to local community leadership to determine project priority and development. The catchment area of the five AHECs is based on geopolitical concentrations; these regions were recognized by the State legislation when it defined the South Texas Border Initiative. Three AHECs are located on the Texas/Mexico Border, covering over 20% of the total US-Mexico Border, and address Hispanic issues; Coastal AHEC addresses access issues of the underserved, and South Central AHEC has emphasized health careers for rural and minority youth. While each Center conducts AHEC programs unique to its target population, over the years, they have grown to cooperate on many projects that meet mutual interest for the region; this has proven to be cost effective, has allowed more variety in the types of services offered, and has permitted each AHEC to develop an expertise that can be shared with the other AHEC sites.

There are now numerous sites throughout South Texas available for clinical training and education of health professions student, residents, and postgraduates. AHEC also sponsors increasing numbers of educational programs in collaboration with local colleges and universities. Each year, the number of health profession students choosing these remote sites for training and education has increased. Graduates have started to emerge from these programs, and many are staying in South Texas. This success is a tribute to the significant force made possible when local communities and institutions of higher learning work together toward a common goal.

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Health Careers Programs and Projects:
refers to those programs and projects that support recruitment and retention of all current and future health care providers within the state.

Health Professional Continuing Education:
refers to those programs that assist with recruitment and retention by providing timely, relevant, and convenient means for providers to obtain continuing education credits for their respective disciplines.

Health Disparity Programs and Initiatives:
refers to those programs and sets of initiatives that respond to the issue of increased access and decreased barriers to health care services for the constituencies that are served by the Center.

Prevention and Emergency Preparedness Activities and Projects:
refers to those activities and projects that combine community-based research into community-based education programs.

Health Promotion Projects and Programs:
refers to those educational outreach projects and programs that increase optimal health within the Center’s target population.

Community Needs Assessments:
refers to those activities that involve one of many various methods to identify community needs in order to work together in solving community problems

Technical Assistance Activities: refers to those activities that call upon the Center and staff to address issues of “filling the gap” and facilitating partnerships between organizations with common missions who seek to collaborate to build capacity and infrastructure versus compete for like funding and resources.

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