TSU, UH centers on a mission to improve health in the hood

Texas Southern University and the University of Houston share several things in common, including the official year each institution was founded (1927) and their geographic location (literally right across the street from each other in Houston’s historic Third Ward).

They share something else, as well – an institutional commitment to improving the health outcomes and realities for residents of Third Ward and beyond.

Born during the tail-end of the COVID-19 pandemic, TSU’s Center for Transformative Health (CTH) has become a force for change. The UH Health Family Care Center (FCC), now roughly two-and-a-half years old, has already established itself as a community staple.

TSU Center for Transformative Health

Statistics have shown that Black and Brown communities and individuals living in urban settings were hit the hardest and suffered the most during the COVID-19 pandemic. That pandemic magnified and made plain to the larger society common health problems that have plagued these communities for decades.

Enter TSU’s CTH, which strives to conduct research and help develop multi-level interventions that not only drive change in population health, but further the science that transforms lives.

“We realized very quickly with COVID-19, based upon a lot of data that we’ve collected in the last three years, that there was a need for a public health agenda beyond COVID-19,” said Zuri Dale, the center’s executive director.

Dale said because there’s a synergy between infectious diseases and chronic diseases, and because community members who contracted COVID-19 had so many other conditions, TSU’s COVID care team, which Dale led, began to wonder if there was some association between their patients’ infections and chronic conditions they already have (i.e. diabetes, heart disease, COPD, high cholesterol, stroke, asthma, obesity, etc.).

Dale’s curiosity fueled her desire to create a more comprehensive and holistic approach to disease prevention and surveillance and general healthcare. The result: the Center for Transformative Health.

“We use evidence-based practices to strengthen the conditions that promote health overall. We focus on infectious diseases and chronic diseases. We do that synergistically. It’s a little bit different than other centers because some choose whether infectious versus chronic. We do a little bit of both. We also do a little bit of mental health work, because we have seen a new onset of anxiety and depression since COVID-19,” said Dale.

“And just by virtue of where TSU is positioned in the community, we do a lot of community engagement, getting out educating the community on prevention, offering primary screenings, and a lot of service linkage, connecting individuals to institutions providing the care they need.”

The CTH’s overall initiative is structured around the following:

1. Engaging stakeholders and community coalitions in conducting research focused on health promotion and disease prevention
2. Implementing multi-disciplinary community-based research initiatives
3. Designing opportunities that address the prevention and control of infectious diseases
4. Expanding access to mental health resources and providers
5. Continuing to analyze the lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic and be prepared to assist in the next public health emergency.

UH Health Family Care Center

TSU’s across-the-street neighbor, the University of Houston Main Campus, has its own new-ish health-related institution; the Tilman J. Fertitta Family College of Medicine and its UH Health Family Care Center which offers affordable, comprehensive primary care services (primary care, women’s health, outpatient mental health services, integrated behavioral health services, psychiatry) in one convenient location.

And the FCC wasted no time establishing real relationships with Third Ward institutions and individuals.

“As a stakeholder in the Third Ward community, Boynton Chapel Methodist Church is committed to leveraging the strengths of research and faith communities towards efforts to improve the social determinants of health in underserved communities,” said Reverend Linda Davis, pastor of Boynton. “With that said, Boynton is excited about the University of Houston Family Care Center. The Family Care Center is an on-campus health clinic that provides affordable, comprehensive and integrated primary care and mental health services to the University of Houston community and surrounding neighborhood.”

Paule Anne Lewis, the UH College of Medicine’s associate vice president of business operations, spoke with the Defender last August during the center’s inaugural Back to School Block Party, about the FCC’s investment in Third Ward.

“We believe that health and education are equally important to children,” she said. “So, we want to make sure that kids in our community, specifically here at UH and Third Ward, are getting a healthy good start back to school this year. So, we’re providing them vaccines, eye exams and free sports physicals.

During that event, the FCC partnered with the area H.E.B. which provided attendees with backpacks and school supplies, Community Health Choices, the Houston Texans YMCA, non-profits like Sock Out Poverty and the V.O. Burton Foundation, Boynton, and others, including multiple other UH centers and offices.

“One of the best things about being part of the University of Houston is having so much support across the university for all of our initiatives in our community,” shared Lewis.

Sidney Lacey, a UH alum and FCC board member, has taken it upon himself to serve as a connector between the FCC and Third Ward and Greater Houston service providers.

“I actually go to city councilmen, to people involved in community service already and get information to them and the FCC so they can distribute, because they’re the connectors in the community already,” said Lacey. “What we’re trying to do is not come in from the top down and tell people how to do things. There are people already, people in the community, who know how to do things. We just provide a service and the only way we can get that to them is that the people already connected in those areas serve.

“What we’re doing now for the community, between the FCC to take care of those needs that are the everyday needs, and then to the [Fertitta] medical school training the future staff, I couldn’t be more proud.