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Frontera de Salud

Program Summary

The Frontera video is now available on streaming server; it requires the free Internet plug-in RealPlayer to be viewed. If you need it, go to www.real.com.

Program Description

Frontera de Salud (Frontera) is a service organization founded and staffed by medical, nursing and allied health students committed to bringing primary health care to the under-served. The purpose of Frontera's mission is three-fold: (1) to address community health issues by delivering cost-effective primary care to communities in need; (2) to further the clinical competency of Frontera volunteers by providing settings in which to perfect their burgeoning skills; and, (3) to encourage students to reflect on the profession of health care as a moral practice.

Historical Background

Frontera's work was initiated in 1998 by students returning from the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. During third-year clerkships at public clinics in “el Valle,” these students observed first-hand the misfortune of the “working poor” (i.e. those who cannot afford insurance, yet earn too much for Medicaid and are too young for Medicare) who rely on publicly funded clinics for their health care. With the loss of government aid, these clinics are cutting back on services and have begun to compete – both among themselves and with private providers – for insured patients, leaving the uninsured to fend for themselves. To aid these patients, and as evidence of their commitment to the humane tradition of health care, this handful of third-year medical students founded Frontera de Salud, an all-volunteer organization which has grown to include hundreds of health care professionals-in-training.

Mission Statement

Frontera de Salud assumes that health care professionals enter the healing arts motivated at least in part by a service ideal. All too often, however, the demands of school and career development preclude putting altruism into practice, thereby curtailing the moral development of health care professionals. Frontera counteracts that trend with a systematic approach to medical education that challenges students to act on their ideals from the day they enter a medical or other health professional school. The program is unique in its integration of practical application and humane reflection, emphasizing a constant dialogue between competence and compassion, the experience of the clinic and the reality of care. As witnesses to the suffering of the impoverished and the dispossessed, it is expected that Frontera volunteers will mature into caring and responsible healers, and as future professionals, strong advocates for the health of all Americans.

Administration

To co-ordinate and support the student and primary care medical residents' health care and education activities, Frontera has established an administrative center housed in the Institute for the Medical Humanities (IMH) at UTMB, and appointed as director Dr. Kirk L. Smith, one of the student-founders of Frontera de Salud, now an MD/PhD graduate with a faculty appointment at UTMB. The IMH, established in 1973, is the nation's premier graduate-level medical humanities education institution and is especially suited to the task of housing Frontera to promote both the core values and the humane ideal of health care.

Click here, Frontera de Salud to read more.