By Christi Fish
Public Affairs Specialist
(March 23, 2009)--The UTSA Health Disparities Task Force will host a seminar, "Youth-Onset Type II Diabetes Prevention: Results from a Randomized Controlled Trial," from 4 to 5 p.m., Tuesday, March 24 in Biotechnology, Sciences and Engineering Building Room 2.102 on the 1604 Campus. Free and open to the public, the seminar is the third in a series addressing public health concerns.
As the keynote speaker, San Antonio native and youth diabetes expert Roberto P. Treviño, M.D., will discuss ways to combat diabetes in children.
According to the National Diabetes Education Program (NDEP), diabetes is one of the most common diseases in school-aged children. In children over age 10, approximately 46 percent of Hispanics, 57 percent of African-Americans, 69 percent of Asian/Pacific Islanders and 86 percent of American Indian youths have type II diabetes. NDEF isa partnership of the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more than 200 public and private organizations.
In 1986, Treviño and colleague Roberto Ross, M.D., founded the San Antonio Institute of Medicine and South Alamo Medical Group. Both the institute and the five-clinic medical group offer medical care to the residents of socially deprived San Antonio neighborhoods.
Treviño is the founder of San Antonio-based Social and Health Research Center (SHRC), a diabetes nonprofit organization created as a result of his dissatisfaction with the medical model for youth diabetes prevention and treatment. For 12 years, SHRC has operated the Bienestar (Spanish for "well-being") diabetes prevention program in elementary schools. The program instills healthy lifetime habits in children through bilingual curricula targeting parents, classrooms, school cafeterias and after-school programs.
Treviño, who studied medicine in Mexico City and Chicago, has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and has received recognition from the Ford Corp., the Texas Education Agency and the American College of Physicians. He has received three National Institutes of Health grants totaling $16 million, two of which represent the largest school-based diabetes prevention studies in the country.
For more information on the UTSA Health Disparities Initiative, contact Thomas Forsthuber, College of Sciences, at (210) 458-5760.