Border consultants team up to do ‘technical’ work
June 1, 2001 2 minutes read
Border consultants team up to do technical’ work
Leave politics to others, they say
A new organization called the Border TB Consultants Association aims to put good intentions into practice when it comes to management of cross-border cases.
"Our first order of business is to enhance collaboration among TB controllers, program managers, physicians, and the rest of us who deal with cross-border cases," says Charles Wallace, PhD, MPH, the state TB controller of Texas. "Even though we already have formal agreements with the border states and sister cities [in Mexico], we want to do more to implement these agreements." That should translate into better continuity of care and better adherence to agreed-upon treatment regimens, especially for multidrug-resistant TB, he says.
The flavor and tone of the new association will be decidedly technical and practical, not political and conceptual, says Miguel Escobedo, MD, Texas regional public health director and head of JUNTOS, a cross-border project in El Paso. "The idea is basically to do away with as much top-down politics as possible," Escobedo adds. "This is for technical people, people who speak the same technical language and share the same goals. Our task will be to implement some of the policies devised by top-down organizations like Ten Against TB."
Some at that binational group — which consists of a bevy of Mexican and American officials, nongovernmental organizations, and TB experts — have bristled at the creation of the consultants’ association, complaining that it’s a breakaway group. Nothing could be further from the truth, Escobedo says. "We want to complement what Ten Against TB is doing, not take away from it," he declares.
The Border TB Consultants group will hold its first meeting June 30 in conjunction with the meeting of the U.S. Border Health Association, which is meeting in Las Cruces, NM. At that time, the new group will begin work on bylaws and goals, talk about the upcoming pilot for the binational TB card, and discuss a hoped-for pilot program of a new case management system from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Escobedo adds.
For now, the fledgling group plans to limit its scope to Texas’ southern border. "It’s not that we’re excluding anyone [in other border states] from joining," Wallace adds. "We just want to see how these first steps pan out. I know there will be interest from other border states."
That inclusive spirit is reflected in the name chosen for the organization, Wallace points out. "We deliberately chose the word consultant,’ not controller,’ because we want to engage not just TB controllers, but also program managers, physicians, and all the others who work with TB in a given jurisdiction," he says.
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