Texas Department of State Health Services

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  1. The Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) is being profiled. The department is of interest to The Asthma Files because they oversee the state of Texas, which includes target city Houston, and often has different health initiatives when compared to Houston, which will be analyzed in later annotations and events.
  2. The DSHS has created and revised a set of frameworks in combating asthma in collaboration with the Asthma Coalition of Texas called the Texas Asthma Plan. The DSHS also runs the Texas Asthma Control Program (TACP), which serves as the main branch of the department for gathering and releasing data on asthma and running initiatives on asthma education for schools and families.
  3. The state department released the first Texas Asthma Plan starting in 2000. Many other states, such as New York, also release similar plans to fight asthma, though Texas updates their plans more often than New York does.
  4. They are running education programs in schools and poorer residential areas about asthma that are similar to what other states run. What does make them unique is the extreme poverty that some of the targets of these programs by the DSHS live in. However, some measures that are recommended by the department often get rejected by the governor, so it may suggest that the department has some problems with the governor's office.
  5. The department collects its own data on the population and health of Texas, and its website offers many fact sheets and documents about asthma and the economic burden created by it in the state.
  6. The department also draws information and inspiration from the departments of health from other states. When recommending that the governor take another at an initiative to reduce school bus idling, the DSHS took examples from other states and demonstrated the environmental and monetary benefits from such a program.
  7. They rely on information collected from hospitals, and have their own center within the department to collect and analyze statistics (Center for Health Statistics).
  8. They work within the state of Texas, which has a conservative political ecosystem. Often times, the governor will reject certain initiatives that aim to fight pollution by saying that these policies should be decided at a local level.
  9. Seeing the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on treating asthma in hospital visits, especially $400 million dollars spent in what the department called preventable cases, has influenced their recent policy focus on educating people and pushing policies to reduce air pollution.
  10. Most of their funding comes from taxpayers and the state of Texas, though some money for certain publications does come from private institutions like Baylor University. Since most of the money comes from the public, this means they are most inclined to give the people what they want in terms of health services, while also being controlled by the state officials as well.
  11. The DSHS has likely taken inspiration from the health departments and the policies enacted by them. Seeing what has worked and what has not in different states give the DSHS an idea of what to experiment with in Texas.
  12. This group finds getting initiatives through the government to be the most challenging part of dealing with environmental and public health.
  13. They do call for the government to accept more initiatives to improve air quality. Initiatives, such as one for limiting the amount of time that buses spending idling their engines, was vetoed by the governor due to his belief that an issue like this should be handled by local governments.
  14. The Asthma Files can supplement this group by examining the DSHS's initiatives to educate schools and the general public about asthma and seeing how they could be applied to other cities.