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The Texas Medical Association will be hosting its annual Border Health Conference in Edinburg where community leaders, lawmakers and physicians can discuss and develop solutions for healthcare challenges along the border.

This year’s conference will be held from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday, Aug. 21 at the Edinburg Conference Center at Renaissance, located at 118 Paseo Del Prado in Edinburg.

The conference will feature guest speakers that will present on various topics including an Overview of Texas Rural Health, Advancing Access to Health Coverage in Texas: Building an Effective Alliance as well as a briefing from the Texas Department of State Health.

Other presentations include Building the Border Health Workforce: How Community-Engaged Research Creates Healthier Communities and CME: Health Care Disparities: What Are They and What Can We Do About Them?

Among the presenters this year is Dr. Adrian Billings, chair of rural health for Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, who will be kicking off the presentations with an overview of the state’s rural healthcare.

Throughout his presentation Billings will discuss the struggles with rural healthcare access caused by shortages across the workforce in those areas.

Although there are healthcare workforce shortages in urban areas as well, Billings explained that the impact is “even more acute and chronic” in rural areas with many struggling with recruitment and retention.

“The result of this rural healthcare workforce shortage are increased wait times to be seen for urgent and chronic care conditions that could lead to poor healthcare outcomes,” Billings said Tuesday. “All of the leading morbidity and mortality rates in the United States like cardiovascular disease, cancers, unintentional injuries — those are all higher in rural areas for rural populations and the root cause is limited healthcare access in those rural areas.”

He added that limited access does not just refer to hospitals but also access to pharmacies, a labor and delivery facility, an emergency room, a place for lab work or even just preventative care.

Similarly, the Rio Grande Valley also suffers from high rates of chronic diseases as well as higher morbidity and mortality rates.

Data that Billings provided MyRGV.com supports longstanding concerns that the Valley struggles specifically with obesity, diabetes and poverty. Physical inactivity is also among the Valley’s areas of struggle.

The area also has a large uninsured and underinsured population with some relying solely on Medicaid or Medicare, which Billing explained creates more barriers for patients as not all providers or healthcare organizations have programs for uninsured patients to make a healthcare visit more affordable.

He added that some providers or clinics may not even accept Medicaid or Medicare.

In addition to that, with much of the population speaking Spanish, Billings explained there are sometimes communication barriers between a patient and physician that can cause delays in care or miscommunication.

Despite the current situation, Billings believes there’s hope for change.

Throughout his career he explained he has seen a growing recognition by the state and federal government that more investment in rural healthcare is needed.

Some of that change came in the form of the recent Rural Health Transformation Program, which allocates $50 billion in federal funds from fiscal year 2026 to 2030 to help strengthen healthcare in rural areas.

Billings explained the change doesn’t stop there.

He emphasized the importance of reaching out to rural communities and becoming more involved in the K-12 grade levels as well as the university level to help mentor and guide students toward healthcare training programs that will hopefully lead them back to serving their community.

Among those efforts is the Rural Admission Medical Program, or RAMP, a concept proposal that would work similarly to the Joint Admission Medical Program, or JAMP, by creating a pathway for students from rural areas to get into medical school with lower MCAT scores and lower GPAs.

Billings, who authored the proposal alongside a medical student, explained the idea for the program came after learning there had been a decline in rural origin students in medical schools over the past 20 years.

From 2002 to 2017 studies showed an 18% decline in rural medical school applicants and a 28% decline in rural matriculants, which account for 4.3% of Texas’ 15% rural population.

Through this program students at the university level would have summer internship opportunities, exposure to rural medicine, scholarships, loan support and mentorship.

Once in medical school students will continue to have scholarship support, rural medicine clerkships and electives as well as the opportunity to pursue residency programs in Texas.

The goal of the program is to ultimately curb the healthcare workforce shortage in rural areas by supporting rural origin students with the hope they will return to their hometowns to expand access to care.

Billings explained that the proposal, which was written nearly three years ago, had been picked up by state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, who serves as the chair of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee.

Kolkhorst authored the proposal into Senate Bill 2695 in an effort to improve access to care.

The bill did not pass the house vote.

However, Billings explained there is a continued interest by the Texas Medical Association and the Texas Health Education Services to try to reintroduce RAMP as a bill.

He hopes to continue to advocate for rural healthcare across the state.

“A rural zip code should not be a risk factor for one’s health and it really is right now,” Billings said. “A recognition that we need to be investing more in rural healthcare access, rural health workforce development so that we can reduce disparities between our urban and rural populations.”