Office of Border Health

NM Border Health Council

The New Mexico Border Health Council was organized in 1990 as an ad hoc forum to help address the health issues created by rapid economic and population growth in the New Mexico’s portion of the U.S.-Mexico Border Region. This growth was overwhelming the capacity of healthcare providers to meet preventive care demands, especially among the poorest of the poor, indigents, and the families of migrant workers who labored on farms and in construction and service jobs in the region.

 

The mission of the Border Health Council is to improve the health status of the New Mexico border and immigrant subpopulations through advocacy, community education and resource development. The purpose of the Council is to work actively to represent the concerns of the New Mexico border community by making recommendations at the local, state, and federal levels, promoting enabling legislation and increased funding to improve basic public health and primary care services through applied research, infrastructure development, expanding the healthcare workforce, and ensuring an equitable healthcare system for all citizens and residents of New Mexico regardless of their ethnicity, origins, socioeconomic or educational stature.

 

The Border Health Council is a volunteer organization made up of professionals and community representatives, mainly throughout Southern New Mexico. The Council serves as the primary community advisory body to and advocacy body for the OBH. Broad based community representation is the key to the Council's success; and membership is open to all interested individuals.

The Council's accomplishments have included the advocating for a Senate Joint Memorial that led to an assessment of the need to address the unique healthcare problems found in the U.S.-Mexico Border Region. This assessment led to the drafting and passage of a bill to establish the Office of Border Health (OBH) as a specialized unit within the New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH).