Tristen Cortez 
EDINBURG – The UTRGV School of Medicine was awarded a grant worth nearly $2.3 million dollars to fund the first Maternal Health Research Center in the Rio Grande Valley on Oct. 24.
The grant’s principal investigator Candace Robledo, an associate professor at the School of Medicine, said that UTRGV will be using the funds to conduct a five-year study seeking to improve maternal health and provide a medical support system for women in the Valley.
“When I joined the faculty here in 2017, we started planning what it would look like if we conducted maternal and child health research here,” Robledo said.
Robledo stated that she joined the UTRGV School of Medicine after studying public health and how communities of people can be affected and treated for issues.
One issue that she says has greatly increased among Hispanic women is the maternal mortality rate.
A study from the American Medical Association in July revealed that mental health is one of the leading causes of pregnancy-related deaths in Hispanic women.
To address the struggles that Robledo said women-of-color experience with health care support, the School of Medicine will team up with organizations such as the South Texas Promotores Association to create a local network of health care workers – dubbed promotoras.
“So, we’ll be learning more about what are the needs here in the Rio Grande Valley, talking to women living in and around the region,” Robledo said. “I think growing up in the Rio Grande Valley, we have a lot of experience to draw from and those are really important to inform the research that happens.”
The opportunities afforded by the grant have become a point of interest for students like Natalie Palacios, president of UTRGV’s Intersectional Feminist Student Organization.
Palacios said she thinks the research can open the doors for greater conversation about women’s health in general.
“It definitely impacts this community, the Valley, more because you know not everyone has the means because they had to immigrate here without any money or products or anything,” Palacios said. “I think that this grant is a really great thing because I think maternal health is also intersecting to what we talk about.”
Robledo encouraged those interested in being involved with the research to reach out to the School of Medicine through its email: AskUTRGVsom@utrgv.edu
