Cross-Sector Collaboration Improves Health in Brownsville, Texas
Breaking Down Barriers to Achieve Wellness
Only a few years ago they were old train tracks—part of an abandoned rail line that ran by several schools and through one of the lowest-income neighborhoods in Brownsville, Texas. Yes, kids might have walked them as a way to get to school, but in reality the old tracks were just a dusty memory of the community’s past.
Today, it’s a mile-long paved trail. It’s lit and landscaped and bordered by murals painted by local schoolchildren. Families go for walks. People ride their bikes and go running with their dogs. And, of course, kids walk to school along the tree-lined path.
The revitalized Belden Trail is both a marker of how far the community has come in its promotion of wellness and a symbol of one of the steps they’ve taken together down the path toward a healthier Brownsville.
A ‘Whole Body’ Approach
Brownsville, Texas, and Matamoros, Mexico, were founded together and sit on opposite sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Brownsville is one of the poorest metro areas in the country. Ninety-seven percent of the people in Brownsville are Hispanic and 87 percent prefer to speak Spanish at home. At best, only 60 percent of its students graduate from high school, and 34 percent of its residents live below the poverty level.
“One in three of our people are diabetic, and 80 percent are either obese or overweight,” said Rose Zavaletta Gowen, MD, City Commissioner in Brownsville. “Those statistics reflect not just those that are the poorest among us, but they also reflect those in the highest income levels. So, the entire community faces health disparities.”
Despite these obstacles, over the past decade the people of Brownsville—from its elected officials to its community leaders to its students—have come together in a shared mission to improve the health of everyone who calls it home.
“We knew that as we crossed disciplines, we had to speak to and engage those that are most vulnerable, as well as those that are not,” she said. “Poverty, jobs, education, health are all connected, and you can’t really examine one without the other.”