“This is going to impact not only the Rio Grande Valley community but the Hispanic community on a national level,” said Project Director Hector F. Aldape.
“We want to take research and apply it to the community and help the community.”
The institute’s fledgling start by way of the National Uninsured Latinos Conference on Sunday, which continues today, draws praise and hopes from university officials and the founder’s namesake eager to see a home-grown Hispanic leadership and policy think tank.
Yzaguirre is the former leader of the Washington, D.C.-based National Council of La Raza. For 30 years, the San Juan native led one of the country’s most respected and largest Hispanic advocacy organizations.
The local institute will seek nationally recognized experts and policy officials from a wide variety of backgrounds, including health, economics, education and government, to engage in research projects and academic discourse, Aldape said.
“For all the work he’s done for 30 years for the council, we’re continuing (Yzaguirre’s) legacy,” he said.
And the institute’s launch could not come at a better time, with health care and immigration likely to be two of the biggest issues in the next presidential election.
“We need more public policy analysis for the whole population and public policy training for all officials,” said Yzaguirre via cell phone from New York.
“We need to have the same kind of quality of public policy understanding and analysis like Harvard and Stanford,” he said.
Founded in 2005, the institute is temporarily housed at the university’s Information, Trade and Technology building. A brick-and-mortar facility is still a few years away, but the institute is collecting donations to sustain programs and an endowment fund.
Yzaguirre, who now teaches at Arizona State University, said he was approached two years ago by UTPA President Blandina Cárdenas and U.S. Rep. Rubén Hinojosa, D-Mercedes, about using his name for the institute.
“I was honored and surprised,” he said, “but I only needed about five minutes to think about it.”
Fostering public debate is something the long-time activist knows well: at age 15, the Pharr-San-Juan-Alamo High School graduate organized the American GI Forum Juniors, a group of teenage Hispanic activists. Soon the group spread to a dozen chapters throughout Texas, according to an AARP article.
He earned a bachelor’s degree from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and there organized several activist organizations before taking helm of the council in1974.
The organization has tackled a multitude of issues facing Hispanics — whether it is education, immigration or Hispanic home-buying opportunities — and at this point, health is a priority, Yzaguirre said.
“Diabetes (statistics) is a good indication of the major issues affecting the Latino community,” he said, adding his son-in-law and mother-in law are both afflicted and he is a “borderline diabetic.”
“The fact it goes untreated indicates it is a problem and one that particularly affects the uninsured.”
And the high numbers of uninsured Hispanics is connected to their concentration in low-wage jobs and jobs lacking benefits or their struggles in accessing underfunded community health centers.
“That’s where the institute can look at data at the state and regional level,” Yzaguirre said.
He is the conference’s honorary chair and will speak several times about the health policy challenges of uninsured Hispanics and proposals on how to extend them coverage.
A single answer may not be reached over the weekend. But the institute bearing his name at least offers a private-public and government platform to discuss solutions, said Roland Arriola, the university’s vice president for external affairs.
“We don’t have anything like this in the Valley,” he said.
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Jennifer C. Smith covers health, environment and science issues at The Monitor. She can be reached at (956) 683-4462. For this and more local stories, visit www.themonitor.com.