El Paso gains support for health panel

 

Reyes, Hutchison give pitch   

By Jim Conley

El Paso Times

 

An El Paso health foundation chief and U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, on Tuesday endorsed U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's pitch for El Paso to become the headquarters for the newly established U.S.-Mexico Border Health Commission.

 

Hutchison, R-Texas, on Monday told scientists, regulators, medical professionals and environmentalists in San Antonio at the International Consortium for the Environment that "Texas is ground zero in the fight to improve border health, and that makes it the right place to locate the commission."

 

The commission is assigned to find ways to improve the health of residents along the border.

 

Hutchison told members of the consortium that El Paso would be an ideal site for the headquarters.  She said that the border region's hepatitis rate is high and that the "alarming tuberculosis rate is three times the national average.  Texas is on the front line of a battle to halt the spread of these diseases before they threaten people throughout our state and nation."

 

Reyes said Tuesday that a decision could be made on a headquarters location within 90 days.

 

"Our biggest competition is San Diego," he said.  We've been working very 'hard to get it located in El Paso (because) the city is centrally located on the 2,000 mile border.

 

"It looks very good for El Paso to be selected," Reyes said. 

 

Ann Pauli, president and chief executive officer of the Paso Del Norte Health Foundation in El Paso, agreed.

 

"We would love to have it here," she said Tuesday.  "We have major health issues, (and) we are in the perfect location, right across from Juarez." 

 

Pauli said her $220 million private foundation, whose objective is health-care education and prevention of health-care problems, "has indicated an interest in having the commission headquarters here, but as a private Foundation we cannot lobby."

 

She said the foundation, along with the University of Texas at El Paso, from which the foundation rents its headquarters at 1100 N. Stanton, has offered space in the building to the new commission.

 

The commission was authorized by Congress in 1994 with Hutchison's urging.  She secured $3.3 million for the commission in fiscal years 1998-2000.