Brownsville's Resilient Initiative for Growing a Healthy Tomorrow (BRIGHT): A Community-Driven Approach to Addressing Pediatric Chronic Conditions in Brownsville, Texas - Project Abstract: Pediatric chronic conditions are a growing concern for child health and future healthcare costs in Brownsville, Texas. The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston) School of Public Health Brownsville Regional Campus proposes a community-driven demonstration project to identify and address pediatric anchor condition(s) through community engagement, comprehensive health assessment, integrated data infrastructure and dashboard development, evidence-based intervention implementation, and rigorous evaluation. This project builds on more than 25 years of community-engaged projects, intervention implementation, and evaluation in the Rio Grande Valley, with established partnerships across schools, healthcare providers, local government, and the community. Strategy 1: Community Engagement and Coalition Building: A dedicated Brownsville Community Coalition (BCC), supported by the existing UTHealth Houston Collaborative Action Board (CAB) and Youth Action Board (YAB), will guide the project from assessment through implementation and evaluation. The BCC will help interpret data, identify priorities, select evidence-based interventions, review outcomes, and guide continuous quality improvement. Strategy 2: Community Health Assessment and Priority Setting: The project will conduct a comprehensive community health assessment using integrated data from the Texas All-Payer Claims Database (TX-APCD), Connected Care Exchange (CCE)/Brownsville Health Information Exchange (HIE), the Border Health Research Cohort, school data, and other existing sources. Findings will guide selection of the pediatric anchor condition(s), identify contributing factors and existing resources, and establish baseline measures. Strategy 3: Data Infrastructure, Data Governance, and Dashboard Development: The project will develop data infrastructure that integrates claims, clinical, school, and project-specific data into a dashboard and secure analytic dataset. This infrastructure will support community assessment, intervention monitoring, evaluation, and measurement of healthcare utilization. Our project team is uniquely positioned with access to TX-Medicaid All Payor Claims Data and Rio Grande Valley Health Information Exchange data. Strategy 4: Intervention Implementation: Following anchor condition approval, the project team will work with the BCC and implementation partners to select, adapt, and implement evidence-based interventions across clinical, school, community, and environmental settings. Strategy 5: Evaluation and Continuous Quality Improvement: Evaluation will use a mixed-methods engaged approach to assess process, implementation, and short and intermediate health outcomes. Evaluation findings will inform continuous improvement cycles. This demonstration project builds on trusted community partnerships, evidence-based intervention experience, and data infrastructure developed by UTHealth Houston School of Public Health. The combination of longstanding relationships with schools, healthcare providers, and local organizations, along with expertise in implementation, evaluation, and data analysis, represents a level of capacity and infrastructure rarely available for a project. This project will establish a practical, data-informed model for addressing pediatric chronic conditions that can be adapted by communities seeking to improve child health outcomes and reduce preventable healthcare burden.
