Across all four counties of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, fewer health professionals are available proportionately for the population than in the state as a whole, a cause cited for the high rate of emergency room use in one county. In Willacy County there is no hospital in the county. School and community health initiatives strive to meet the needs.
In this Lower Rio Grande Valley clinic, patients with diabetes are awaiting prescriptions, evaluations, and advice.
How well blood sugar levels are controlled determines whether fathers and mothers go to work, whether children succeed in school, and, ultimately, whether life continues with quality or spirals into an ever-widening circle of health problems affecting vision, heart health, and kidney function. Studies in Texas and elsewhere have found the rate of type 2 diabetes is two to four times higher in Hispanic Americans than in non-Hispanic white Americans.
The four counties of the Lower Rio Grande Valley - Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr, and Willacy - are characterized by health care resources and services whose levels are as much as 80% below those of the state. Hospitals and medical practices use incentives to lure physicians, but ratios of all health care workers to the population are lower than they are at the state level.
As for health care services, one county has no hospital at all, and two have no county health departments.
In such an environment, government-funded clinics and nonprofit agencies meet part of the residents' needs. What needs remain may go unmet or may be satisfied by a lower priced, Spanish language-dominated, and more familiar alternative - the curanderos, Mexican doctors and dentists, Mexican pharmacists, and herb sellers south of the river.
