HSC receives Healthy Kids, Healthy Families grant from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas
The University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth recently was awarded a $25,000 Healthy Kids, Healthy Families® grant from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas (BCBSTX). The funding will allow the university’s Pediatric Mobile Clinic to continue striving to increase health care access for children across North Texas.
The clinic has seen more than 11,000 children, serving them and their families through well-child check-ups, sick visits, sports physicals, immunizations and screenings for vision, hearing, lead, anemia and more. From 2020 to 2021, the clinic helped nearly 2,000 patients.
The goal of the clinic is to improve access to health care and increase health-promotion and disease-prevention efforts in the face of increasing health disparities between those with social or economic disadvantages and those without those disadvantages. Additionally, the program provides health education in nutrition, physical activity, dental hygiene and other topics designed to increase health literacy in patients.
“We are honored and excited to be one of the recipients of the 2022 Healthy Kids, Healthy Families program grants,” said Dr. Christina Robinson, the clinic’s medical director. “Through this grant to the Pediatric Mobile Clinic, we will be able to deliver even more primary care services to children. This will help prevent diseases and connect their families to additional community partners who can address other social determinants of health such as lack of housing, food insecurity, education and mental health.”
Launched in 2011, the Healthy Kids, Healthy Families initiative started as a three-year project designed to improve the health and wellness of at least 1 million children through community investments. The program was extended as part of BCBSTX’s ongoing commitment to the health and well-being of children and families across Texas.
“We are happy to award these grants that will support and nurture meaningful and transformational projects across Texas,” said Sheena Payne, BCBSTX’s director of community investments. “Strategically, it is also important that we continue to aid community-based organizations that are directly supporting children and families with health and wellness equity as well as building foundations for economic opportunity.”
The Healthy Kids, Healthy Families program — which centers on nutrition, physical activity, disease prevention and management, and supporting safe environments — has awarded more than $20 million in funding since its inception, and this year will impact the lives of more than 5 million children and adults in Texas.
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