By Amy Kapp
Prescribing a
Healthier Brownsville
Through Trails
In
the mid-2000s, the City of
Brownsville, Texas, began a mas-
sive effort to improve the health
of its 185,000 residents when
studies showed an extreme prevalence of
obesity and chronic disease among children
and adults. Leading this charge is Dr. Rose
Gowen—city commissioner since 2009 and
a physician of more than 20 years—who is
dedicated to transforming her hometown
into a more active place to live.
Through collaboration with the
University of Texas (UT) at Brownsville
School of Public Health, Dr. Gowen was
instrumental in developing the city’s first
farmers market, which was recognized
as a model of excellence by the Texas
Department of Health and the U.S.
Mexico Border Health Commission.
She also helped pass the city’s first
commercial sidewalk and Complete
Streets resolutions, the latter of which
reserves 10 percent of street development
funds for the creation of walking and
biking infrastructure. In 2011, she was
elected to the Brownsville Community
Dr. Rose
Gowen
Improvement Corporation (BCIC),
which completed a 1-mile rail-trail
through one of the most disadvantaged
areas of the city in 2013. Brownsville
now is embarking on a five-year plan to
complete 23 miles of new trails in a low-
income area in the southernmost part of
the city.
In June 2015, the Texas Legislature
passed a House resolution recogniz-
ing Brownsville as the Bicycling Capital
of the Rio Grande Valley. We recently
spoke with Dr. Gowen to learn about
Brownsville’s health-trail transformation.
How did your work as a physician
motivate you to get involved in a
community-wide health and wellness
effort?
In 2006, the UT-Brownsville School of
Public Health came knocking on my door
to ask if I’d write articles on the impor-
tance of nutrition and healthy food choic-
es. They presented me with data showing
that 80 percent of Brownsville residents
were overweight, and one in three was
diabetic. I was blown away. I thought, “If I
see one patient at a time, 20 to 25 per day,
in a community of 185,000 people, I’m
not even making a dent.”
Many of the issues my female patients
had—diabetes and certain cancers—were
very much related to the fact that they
were overweight. I knew I couldn’t treat
those issues without addressing their diet
and exercise habits. But what really influ-
enced me to get involved on a larger level
was when I talked to patients who were
20 to 30 pounds overweight about the
importance of a healthy living weight.
In a community where 80 percent of the
people are overweight, that’s on the small
end. They would go home to people who
viewed them as [healthy]; why would
they follow my direction?
I realized that unless we shifted the
definition of health community-wide,
doctors were going to have a difficult
time changing individual behaviors.
How did Brownsville’s wider community
health initiative get off the ground, and
rails
to
trails
u
fall.15
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