HARLINGEN — Fourth-year medical student Yvonne Umeh said she keeps looking for chances to come back to study at the Regional Academic Health Center.
Gov. Rick Perry and state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., D-Brownsville, hope future medical students will follow in Umeh’s footsteps.
Umeh is a student at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio and spent her third year and part of her fourth year studying at the RAHC because she loves the Rio Grande Valley culture. Here, she can study diseases such as diabetes among a population with a high rate of the disease.
Perry and Lucio on Tuesday signed Texas Senate Bill 98, which calls for the RAHC — which is overseen by UT Health Science Center in San Antonio — to be converted into an independent, four-year medical school.
Chancellor of the University of Texas System Francisco Cigarroa, state Rep. Eddie Lucio III, D-Brownsville, other state representatives and Mayor Chris Boswell also participated in the ceremonial signing Tuesday at the RAHC.
The University of Texas Health Science Center-South Texas, Sen. Lucio said, would allow students from the Valley and surrounding counties to pursue a medical education.
“The time is here for (South Texas) students to have access to a medical education,” Sen. Lucio said.
The signing of this bill “gets the ball rolling” on establishing a $100 million to $150 million, four-year university, he said.
Sen. Lucio said he hopes to start working on ways to fund the project as soon as the next legislative session in 2011, which could allow the medical school to open in the next seven to eight years. He also hopes the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board will continue its support for the school.
Perry said establishing a four-year university in South Texas will eventually lead to an increase in the number of physicians in an area that is underserved.
South Texas has 57 physicians for every 100,000 residents, Perry said. In other parts of the state, the average is 157 physicians per 100,000 residents.
“(Students) will be educated here and will stay here,” the governor said. “It is vitally important for this area, which has experienced a shortage of health caregivers for too long.”
“Less than 12 percent of medical school graduates are Hispanic,” Perry said. “We believe we can do better than that and this school will help with those (graduation rates).”
Sen. Lucio also said a four-year medical school could have a local economic impact of about $1.3 billion in the school’s first 10 years.
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Governor Rick Perry
Governor Rick Perry