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Clad in elaborate Asgardian armor and armed with the enchanted hammer, Thor’s crimson cape rippled behind him as he marched to the center of the stage. But this Thor was missing something.
Injuries—including those from car accidents, falls, and drowning—are the leading cause of death and disability of children. Pediatricians can partner with parents to enlist prevention strategies to avoid these tragedies.
With about 7.4 million children, Texas has more than twice the number of Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and New Mexico combined. While Texans may say everything here is bigger and better, children’s health is one area that could be improved.
There was always a nurse. Sheri Henriksen remembers this clearly from one of the most trying times in her family’s life.
The only thing that shined brighter than the Friday night lights at Muleshoe High School was Matthew Alarcon. As a sophomore, the 15-year-old earned a spot on the school’s varsity football team while tackling his schoolwork with ease. But with his team locked in a tight playoff race, he suffered a devastating hit that tore his anterior cruciate ligament—a key ligament that stabilizes the knee joint.
Alexandria Cogdill made the card herself. She signed it—as did everyone in the lab—with a personal flourish: “We took good care of your cells, and they’re excited to kill some tumor!”
Symptoms came and went at first—discomfort, incontinence, anxiety— until they became a part of her daily life, affecting her ability to play golf and be intimate with her husband. Yet it took three years after the first signs before Kim Cole, NP, sought treatment for what turned out to be a prolapsed bladder. The muscles supporting the bladder had weakened, causing her bladder to, as Kim puts it, try to fall out of her body.
Paola Pinto-Patarroyo, MD, and her husband, Luis Franco, MD, had their 20-week ultrasound circled on the calendar for weeks. When the day arrived, the first-time parents eagerly studied the monitor along with the obstetrician.
A wave of excitement rushed over the couple when they learned they were having a boy. But nothing could prepare them for what their obstetrician told them next: Their son had a cleft lip and cleft palate.
When Margo Y. Melchor, EdD, RDH, sees a little girl in a dental chair, she sees herself. Growing up in a family that lacked dental insurance for a number of years, her parents brought her to UTHealth School of Dentistry for her first appointment at age five. Now as the school’s Director of Community Outreach, she oversees the same community-focused care that set her on the path to a career in oral health. “I feel like I’ve come full circle,” Melchor says.
The 2019 Texas legislative session was a success for Susan H. Landry, PhD, who directs the Children’s Learning Institute at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth, when the institute received a healthy increase in critical state funds that will help the very youngest students get a jump start to lifelong learning.
Priscilla Alfaro, MD ’89, remembers how, as a new graduate from McGovern Medical School at UTHealth, she relied on an informal network of friends to help her start her career as a female physician.