MY BACKGROUND

My life started in Austin, Texas. I like to think of Austin as the center of the universe. When I was five years old, we moved to Rio Grande City, Texas, my father’s home town. It is situated in Starr County in far Southeast Texas on the border with Mexico. My great-grandfather Dr. Alexander Headley had immigrated from England and married Maria del Pilar Trevino-Olivarez, his tailor, while living in Camargo on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. In the late 19th C they moved to Rio Grande City. Their daughter, my paternal grandmother, Dr. Mary Ann Headley-Trevino (married name Edgerton) was raised there. She attended the Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia and graduated from there in 1910. She returned to Rio Grande City where she practiced medicine, and is recognized as the first Hispanic female physician in South Texas.

When we moved there in the early 1960’s, Starr County was the third poorest county in the USA. I witnessed the South Texas Farmworkers Strike of the 1960’s. Health care disparities continue to plague the area, albeit improved since my childhood when diarrhea epidemics took the lives of many infants. Cervical cancer remains a major health problem in the area, and I am proud to say that I was a member of a team from the University of Texas at Galveston and the MD Anderson Cancer Center to start a pilot program administering HPV vaccinations to middle school students.

I am very proud of my heritage and always look to giving back to my community. Moving to Rio Grande City was a blessing in disguise when I think of all of life’s lessons that I learned. I am dedicated to honor those life’s lessons, to fight health care disparities and to support diversity, equity and inclusion across all races and ethnicities in the practice of medicine.