 Welcome to First United Methodist Church. I am Laura Merrill. I'm the district superintendent of the McAllen and Southern districts of the United Methodist Church here in South Texas. I want to thank Ricky Sanderford, the pastor here of the church, and his staff for hosting us today, and really thank all of you for being here for this special event. It's thrilling for me to be part of this conversation today and to be able to stand in this particular place to get to do so. And that's because I believe in the role of the church and of religious faith in achieving the well-being of our communities, whatever that faith might be. Years ago, when I had recently arrived in the valley, I was driving to an evening meeting, and I passed a public walking trail in one of the communities here. Kids were playing soccer inside the loop and adults of all ages and sizes were walking around the track. Many of them did not look like athletes, and it made me wonder, what is it that led them to get out there and walk? If you've ever made a change like that in your life, you know how hard it can be. You know that one difficult condition physically can lead to another, and together they can quickly put us in a hole that we think we can't get out of. The changes that we have to make sometimes to be healthy can seem daunting, shifting priorities and behavior, the way we spend our time, the way we socialize. We don't make these changes just because the doctor tells us to or because our kids nag us. So what is it that lies at the heart of the decision to choose a healthier life? To take a new path, I think we have to believe that something better is possible for us. We have to believe we have options and that we're capable of choosing. We have to have others in it with us to help us make those courageous choices, and the role of faith and faith communities in that kind of shift is to me central, because our faith tells us what abundant life looks like. It tells us that even in the midst of difficulty we can find hope and blessing. It tells us that God created us to be marvelous beings, empowered by our connection to God to live out of love and peace and justice and to share that life with other people. Coming to accept and trust that fact about ourselves frees us to see new possibilities in our lives. That's why the work of Methodist Healthcare Ministries has been so transformational and important during my work as a pastor. They supply parish nurses to many of our churches. These nurses develop relationships of care and encouragement and education. They offer places where people can choose exercise and good food, places where people won't be alone as they try to make their lives better. Methodist Healthcare Ministries supplies church-based counselors, a welcoming, listening ear to people who would have no access to mental health resources otherwise. All kinds of other partners receive support from MHM as well, strengthening the fabric of our society with the services they provide. And all of this because we believe we are called by God to serve the underserved with all the resources we can muster. I am grateful for the presence of Methodist Healthcare Ministries here in the Valley, here in South Texas as a partner for so many years in the work of advancing health and wholeness in our communities. Our bodies, minds, and spirits are connected. Our faith impacts our health. Methodist Healthcare Ministries leads from this fundamental principle. And to join now with them in the C Texas Project is indeed a blessing, an opportunity to say yes to the people of the Rio Grande Valley and yes to the fullness of life that our faith-based perspective makes possible. I'm glad to be with you. Thanks for coming, Kevin. Thank you, Laura, great words. Difficult for me to follow, I hate following preachers. They're professionals at public speaking and grabbing the right term and bringing us all to the right place. Thank you so much. I am president and CEO of Methodist Healthcare Ministries. I've been in that position for almost 20 years. Prior to that, I was your Health and Human Services Director out of San Antonio for South Texas. And so I've only had two jobs in 40 years, both of whom and both of which have been in healthcare and taking care of people's needs and all the communities that we've served. It's been a blessing for me to be part of Methodist Healthcare. We own the Methodist hospitals in San Antonio and that's where our resources come from. We're connected to the Methodist Church. Our board is affirmed by the Methodist Church, has the bishop and many of the Methodist Church leadership on it and we are resolved to follow the social principles of the Methodist Church and everything we do. And those of you familiar with the theology of John Wesley understand that we're called to make changes in communities and to use all of our resources and all the places we can to in fact improve the lives of the least served. Our target population are people who don't have resources and so we're not looking for people who have Medicare or Medicaid or CHIP or anything else. We work with people who have no ability to buy or get services from anyone else. And so that's been our target population for all the 20 years I've been there. We currently fund throughout the conference area of the United Methodist Church which is your doubly shaded area on the Texas chart to the right, 73, 74 counties. We fund to the tune of around 72 million a year and we provided in this last year around 800,000 patient visits for people who didn't have resources, who needed primary care, dental care, counseling, family services, parenting services and the like. We're so happy to be here today. We've been here as the Methodist Church for hundreds of years. We've been here as Methodist Healthcare Ministries for around 15 years. We fund to the tune of around four and a half million dollars a year for all of the services that we provide through our subcontracted partners and others in this area. And we're proud to do that. We love the relationships we have with our nonprofit partners because that's how care is delivered in your community. And so we're about enabling, we're about helping, we're about connecting to others to make sure that services can get accomplished. We set out about four or five years ago to kind of move ourselves more out of Bear County, San Antonio where we are, and to have more investments in the Rio Grande Valley and the Raito in Corpus and Curveville and in other places in the conference area. And so we're on a deliberate plan to put more of our resources in the future into areas further out from Bear County than we currently are. We spend a lot of our money right now in Bear County. Our board this August of 2013 allowed us to begin a process that would bring in federal money. We had not done that to this point. Our board, a church-based board was a little leery about being in a relationship with the federal government or the state government for that matter. But they said no, as you look at these compelling community problems if you can figure out how to bring other resources with us into communities, go for it. We set an ambitious goal and Becca Brun will talk about that in a moment. Vice President for our strategic planning and growth of getting up to about $25 million a year and sustained resources we thought we'd ramp up at one or two or three or four million a year for a couple of years. And her team of people put together a grant application for this C-taxes Social Innovation Fund. That was approved and accepted, which will allow us to put $10 million of federal money, $10 million of our money and $10 million of community money, $30 million in two years, with a five-year commitment to continue that if it's successful into the future. And so today we're talking about unveiling the approval of a major CF grant for this community, for these counties to take care of the comorbidities of diabetes, obesity, and depression. And so it's about innovation. It's about looking at effective ways to integrate primary care with behavioral health and integrated behavioral health programs and finding ways to highlight the good work already happening in your community through partners, through nonprofits that you know. But ultimately the goal is for us and everything we do to improve the health outcomes and especially ensuring that the lease served have access to these programs and services. And it's about creating a healthy South Texas. And so what makes this grant different is that we're a faith-based organization and we told the federal government that unless our faith principles are affirmed and our subcontractors' faith principles are affirmed, we don't want the money. And they said, no, we'll fund you with those types of conditions. In fact, in Washington DC six weeks or so ago, they highlighted the fact that we're the first and only faith-based organization to receive a CF grant in its five-year history. And we received the largest grant from the federal government in Washington DC some six weeks ago for this project. And so our board said those are our conditions. We're Methodist. We believe in a fairly universal approach to spirituality and wellness. And we want those approaches to be affirmed through all of our partners. And the Fed said, go for it, do it, figure this out, and make it work. We are going to be an intermediary for the Social Innovation Fund, which means we're going to help identify local programs and services which are effectively meeting a need. And that, we're going to ask Rebecca Stalker to illustrate for us and tell us what's happening in the Rio Grande Valley and how this might impact the things that she's working on and she's doing. So we've got the grant. We're rolling with it. And here is one of your local partners, Rebecca. Hi, good morning. Thank you, Kevin. I'm Rebecca Stalker. I'm the director of Hope Family Health Center in McAllen. We provide medical and counseling services to the uninsured. So anybody who is in our Rio Grande Valley, who does not qualify for Medicaid or Medicare or have private insurance, can come to use our clinic to access volunteer medical providers, volunteer physicians, or grant funded therapists to receive free care. Our patients are the working poor. Many of them have jobs. They just can't afford the insurance that is offered by their work or they don't qualify for Medicaid and Medicare. And right now, the health care in the Rio Grande Valley is such a hot topic. I think that everybody knows for the past, gosh, past year we've been talking about the medical school. We've been talking about the 1115 waivers grants. There is a hospital district. There's a lot of things that we've been talking about. And they're wonderful, wonderful opportunities for the Valley. But we also have to look at the obstacles that the Valley does have and that our patients are facing and our communities facing. When we talk about the health care in the Rio Grande Valley, we bring up topics such as access to care but obesity, diabetes, depression, chronic illnesses. In our four counties, we have an adult obesity rate of 30%. That's extremely, extremely high. So as a non-profit provider to the uninsured, we have the opportunity to directly work with individuals who face a multitude of obstacles. Although the clinic Hope Family Health Center is very small, we only see about 4,000 patients a year, both on the medical and mental health side. We're a very good snapshot of what people are facing in the Valley. Without a doubt, we can't talk about health care without talking about the lack of access to care that we do have in the Valley. In the 2014 regional needs assessment, in the Rio Grande Valley, there are only 15.5 family practitioner physicians for every 100,000 people. That is huge. It's 25% lower than the Texas average. And all of our counties in the Rio Grande Valley are designated as mental health provider shortage areas. Some alarming facts that I found out, I should have known this all along, but I found out just yesterday being black and white, there's one provider for every 2,180 individuals in Hidalgo County. In Star County, there's one provider for every 30,808 people. That is a huge, huge divide and a huge lack of mental health providers that we have down here. And those are some of the obstacles that we face. Access to health doesn't just mean physical access to the centers and access to providers, but it also means access to the knowledge of behavioral health and access to the knowledge of health care and access to the physical health care and financial means. We have approximately 300,000 individuals in Hidalgo County alone without insurance. The Rio Grande Valley also averages 48% of childhood poverty rates. Those are very, very alarming rates that we have to face and our patients face. Because of the lack of access and lack of insurance in extreme financial constraints, people typically wait to get their primary health care at needs met and they have other priorities in life, feeding their family, getting a job, helping their children. Those are their priorities. Primary care is not a priority in their life and therefore their illnesses become chronic illnesses and they use emergency room care because they have gotten so far under the health care means, under wraps. So along with our community health issues, our behavioral health issues, wellness issues. When you have so much stress, when you have poverty, when you worry about your children, when you worry about not being able to have food on your table, depression definitely comes into play. Depression is an illness in our community and we do need to face the fact that we need to help people who are going through this and I don't think that's a secret from anybody. I think everybody knows that we are in very, very big need of behavioral health providers. A high percentage of primary care visits stem directly from behavioral health issues. A mental health disorder can disrupt a person's thinking, their relationship to others, their physical activity, their eating habits and they may use alcohol or drugs because of that and all of that just sends them in a spiral of health care. So we found that hope, like I said, we are very small but we have found that addressing both the physical and the behavioral health needs in one location greatly reduces the stigma for some people. It greatly allows them to have access to care in one place and in one location. People don't have to go all, transportation is a huge issue in our valley. Financial means for transportation is a huge need if we can provide services in one location and let the primary care providers know the importance of behavioral health and working together that is a huge, huge accomplishment for our patients. So this investment in health by Methodist Health Care Ministries, South Texas, through the C. Tejas Brands will improve physical and behavioral health comorbidities through integrated behavioral health interventions and it's such an exciting move towards these outcomes that we really, really want our patients to have. For us, a person comes into our clinic and can see a physical, see a doctor and see a mental health provider and we're not to the point where we want to be to help them in a better way. There are so many better ways that we can help patients and we know that and we're working very hard to and these funds and these grants will allow people, allow organizations to reach the point that they want to reach for patient care. They'll allow organizations to fully and integratively, I don't know if that's a word, but I will say it, integratively serve individuals for their behavioral and physical health needs. Some of the positive outcomes can come in this. We can decrease the portion of adults experiencing major depressive episodes by directly providing those services in-house. We could reduce the amount of patients who have hemoglobin A1C levels at 9% or greater and we could build partnerships in the valley and these grants will allow us to have a footprint and allow us to have a voice about our patient's health that we so often don't get to have. And there are of course gonna be challenges with this. There's challenges with health care all the time and these funds aren't going to cure the poverty rate, of course not, but it will allow us to serve the patients in a better way and help the best way that we can. So we're very, very excited about these funds. We're excited about the opportunities for the entire valley and the organizations and for the valley's health. So thank you very much. We have the march of the Rebecca's. So Rebecca Stoker, thank you and Rebecca Brun will be up next. Rebecca Brun is the Vice President for Strategic Planning and Growth at Methodist Health Care Ministries. She and her team who are here put together this application and are working on several others and their success is what brings this forward to us today. And so I'm gonna ask Becca to go into some of the details, some of the timelines and some of what may, we would anticipate some of your questions might be about how this is going to go forward. Becca, thank you very much. Good morning, thank you so much. We are so excited to be here and honored to be in your presence and to share this exciting news with you. As you know, you all on a daily basis, these are exciting times in Rio Grande Valley. The culmination of so many monumental things happening. We, as Rebecca mentioned, the new medical center. We have SpaceX. So what these things are doing, both of which are transforming your educational system, this pipeline for workforce. And so we're here in front of you to capitalize on that and ride that wave and talk about another exciting opportunity for Rio Grande Valley. We are here to talk about an unprecedented $10 million federal grant that is being awarded. The Social Innovation Fund, which the Social Innovation Fund is a key White House initiative of the Corporation for National Community Service. As Kevin mentioned, this $10 million investment will be matched by Methodist healthcare ministries and public and private partnership dollars, dollar to dollar to support a project over the next five years. C-Texas, which is social innovation for a healthy South Texas, is intended to stimulate improvements in chronic disease, such as obesity and diabetes, as Rebecca mentioned, and more specifically, to highlight innovative and integrated behavioral health models that are effectively moving the mark on health outcomes in communities throughout the Rio Grande Valley. The core tenant of this grant is the realization that if we are truly, truly serious about solving community health problems, then we need to engage the community in identifying what those solutions are. That's you all. That's this room full of providers and organizations and entities that create that delivery system in this community. This SIF grant is about highlighting innovation and tapping into community-based solutions that are already in motion and to share those best practices with the rest of the nation. This isn't a deficit-based model. This is quite the opposite. Instead, Washington D.C. has their ear to the ground in South Texas. They're saying to Rio Grande Valley, they're asking local communities to tell us what's working, how do we fix this? And by the way, we're gonna fund you to do that. We're gonna fund you for programming, for research, for evaluation, so that we can increase your organizational capacity and you can scale the amazing things that you're doing. So C. Texas gives us this rare opportunity to show the nation, the rest of the nation, that we have what it takes to conquer some of the toughest health challenges in some of very innovative ways. So the distribution of these funds will happen through a competitive grant process. We're gonna make grants available to local agencies ranging from $250,000 to $2 million on an annual basis. Grants are gonna be made to organizations and institutions such as nonprofit organizations, state and local governments, so that's school districts, that's public health departments, that's academic institutions. Federally qualified health centers, faith-based organizations in community health centers. Grants are awarded to those organizations that are already providing integrated behavior health and who have demonstrated results in improving health outcomes and just are ready to scale their programs. So selected grants will be a collaborative effort and they'll be cross sector partnerships ensuring that there's community ownership and sustainability. So C-Texas Project will be in 12 counties and there's a map over here to illustrate those 12 counties and I'll point out just for today's purpose because we're gonna be doing a road show across the 12 counties, Starr, Hildaga, Willisie and Cameron. As many of you know, there has traditionally been limited funding that has come to South Texas from national, both federal and national foundations. Both from the public and the private. However, the C-Texas grant requires MHM as an intermediary to be catalytic as a funder. And what that means is we're creating co-investment opportunities that will mitigate the risk as well as inspire and broker new relationships and investments in South Texas. That is our role. We are the first intermediaries selected for the state of Texas. So while that's a big challenge, I believe our history has shown we were up for that challenge and we are excited to take that on. The emphasis on research and evidence-based practices that's required by this grant will allow us to evaluate models, to evaluate the things that you're already doing that are so innovative and so important to this community. And we're gonna highlight those and how they impact the health outcomes in communities. And ultimately help to sustain those efforts by attracting additional investments. That's how this grant is gonna work. So we're looking for collaborative funders that are willing to do something monumental, something different, and something that changes the landscape of South Texas. So the timeline for this grant. The RFP is on the streets. It's already out there. That was released on October 31st. Today, right across from this partition, we're hosting a pre-application workshop, as well as traveling to several other counties, the 12 counties. November 24th, the application goes live on Methodist Health Care Ministries' website. December 19th, the deadline for a mandatory letter of inquiry and LOI. And on January 5th, the application is due. Through January and March of 2015, we're gonna be going through a series of review processes. And we hope to make announcements mid-April. Programs and funding starts May in May. So that is the timeline. And that's the conclusion of my remarks. And I know that we're sticking around to answer specific questions and hope to be of more information for you all as you have questions. So to wrap up, this has been the end of a three to five year process that has brought many of you together in lots of meetings here and in San Antonio to talk about the needs of South Texas. And so one process ends and another process begins. And so our current investment in this area, these 12 counties, is around four and a half million dollars. At the end of this process, that investment will go up to per year, close to $19, $20 million. One of the things that I had resented all my life as a guy who had to beg for all the money that I received from every single source in the world was the process of having the newest, greatest, shiniest penny then get turned over on me every year or two or three. And so our commitment is different than the federal government's commitment. We're glad to have these funds to jumpstart this process. We're glad to have the funds to begin this process, but it also adds to what we've been doing for the last 15 or 20 years here. And we're committed to take what's created and what is the success. And what works in this community and to continue to fund it as we start moving into the future. And so our resources will be here as they're available from the entity we own and the profits we receive from the hospital system to continue to do what we have done. Our partners are typically partners until the problem is changed. And so we're not here as a partner for a specific grant for a year or two or three. We're here for an outcome change in the community. And so we look at things like morbidity and mortality. We look at what's happening to populations and we're going to try what will probably be a multi-decade approach. And that's our commitment. We're going to be here as we have been for the last 20 years. We're gonna be here for the next 20 years working on these issues. And the payout for us is that people will live longer. They'll be healthier. The comorbidities of obesity, diabetes and depression which reduces life, life's chances, life expectancy and the quality of life and we all know that. And reduces them terribly for this and many other communities in the United States. We expect at the end of this process to have identified something that works and we are absolutely going to track ourselves against the mortality rates and determine whether or not it is successful on a long-term analysis of the mortality from these types of issues. And so that's the payoff. That's what, when we all win. When somebody's life is improved, when somebody's life chances are much greater and better, when someone's quality of life increases and when someone's family has that loved one around longer, healthier and more productive. And so that's why we're engaged in this. Yes, the money's nice. It helps us scale. Yes, the grant is great. We love to have it. And yes, it helps us move this forward and we have five other places in Texas where we're going to do the same thing. But at the end of the day, it's all about patience and the care of those patients and participants in our programs. And so that's what drives us. That's what we want to see as a change. That's what we want to demonstrate to the country. And that's what we want to declare a success in at the end of this five-year period of time. And so that's what we're also asking you to step with us forward on because we believe that's a noble goal, a great purpose and the reason we all got involved in this high-paying job in the first place where it's so easy to get resources to take care of unfunded patients that walk in our door. And so with that, I'll take any questions that anybody has. Ah, come on. Somebody's got a question. I usually plant one or two because that gets it rolling. Anybody? In the back, please. Yes. So the SIF process required an extensive upfront evaluation contract. That contract is currently, there are five, six, 12 applicants right now. It's a multi-year 1.2 or 3 million dollar contract. 1.4. These are the detailed people. 1.4 million dollar contract, which we have to be entered into and engaged in before we allocate the first grant to an organization. A multi-year, highly analytical to make sure that we're successful and to help every organization create the internal structure necessary to then feed into that. So this can be quantified, this can be determined to be successful, and this can be replicated. Another question? Yes. We currently partner with any organization that provides primary care, health care, dental care behavior, health, and several Catholic organizations in our target area as well. Most notably in Laredo Mercy Ministries is our partner and a variety of others are as well. And so it's, as Sister Stone so said to me from Mercy Ministries, your goals and our goals are the same, your mission and our mission is the same. You should be funding us and at the end of that conversation, over a cocktail, interesting. We ended up funding Mercy Ministries out of Laredo and others for many years. So it's all, the alignment is about patient care and the success of our communities. And we'd love to see the Episcopal Church, the Baptist Church, and many others get engaged and involved in this as well. Yes? Yes. Yeah, the minimum amount to be applied for is 200,000. The maximum amount you can apply for is 2 million. Now, let me give you a detail on that. So if you apply for 200,000, you're gonna have to match 200,000. That's the one-to-one. And we ministries will also match it at a one-to-one basis. It's a three-way match. It gets complicated, but you're gonna have to have part of your organization's commitment to raising local funds. Because the goal of this is to make sure that you're healthy and can continue to sustain your effort at the end of this. Now, if the feds pull away, you might have to scale back. But we're not scaling back. Your local investment won't scale back. And then we'll continue moving this thing forward into the future. And that's part of the sustainment strategy. It's a good strategy. And we'll work with anyone and everyone to try and figure out what the right skill is for your organization. Yes. Can be, you wanna talk about the combination of funds? You're the experts. I'm gonna get the experts to answer that one. It's non-federal match. So it could be local. It could be national foundations. It could actually be state dollars as long as it was general revenue. So it's non-federal match, local or national. And I wanna speak very quickly to the question about the evaluation. Because I think it's an important question. Again, kind of going back to some of my talking points, the entire impetus behind this grant was the White House put aside a bucket of money. And they said, you know what? Instead of us going into local communities and telling local communities, here's the solution to your health and community problems. You tell us what that is, right? And a lot of local communities pushed back and said, well, we're doing things. But because we haven't ever had the ability to write up research and evaluation about what we're doing, we can't prove that. So we're not in a space that allows us to compete for those large federal grants or those large national grants. And so they put this grant together to say, you know what? We're going to go to local communities and say, you tell us and we're gonna pay for your evaluation so that we can get your program to where it needs to be to be able to compete for that, to become sustainable. And so when I was talking about this being a national model, genuinely, this could be a national model on how do you move the mark on obesity and diabetes and integrated health in South Texas. And so part of the grant, part of the grant that the subgrantees receive, a portion of that will be for evaluation. And a requirement will be that you have somebody on site to not only call through the data, but apply that so that you can integrate that back into your program. And it's not a gotcha. You're not penalized for that. It's a process improvement so that you improve the program. Great, thank you. Stick around. Yes? Sure. Question is on how can you pull collaborations together? And the answer is that the training activity later on today will probably go into all of the technical side of how that might work. You know, the goal is to be flexible locally. The goal is to be successful. And so how you pull that together and how you make that work is subject to lots of conversations. Though you will have to identify in your proposal how you intend to raise those funds, you will have a year after approval to do that. I mean, it'd be nice if it came up front and said here's funds, but we know that's not realistic. But a year's process to kind of show how you can be successful is what's going to be allowed. Good, thank you. Let me just clarify. It's $250,000. I just want to make sure that. And the other thing is when we visited the Valley two years ago when we started this initial conversation, mind you, it's been two years in this journey. When we visited with our funded partners and community partners and we said, are you in relationship with national foundations? Are you in relationship with local or state foundations or funders? And the answer was no. Or are you receiving these types of grants? And the answer was no. And it's not because you lacked the programming or you have a good program. It's you're so busy doing the work. And the back office is oftentimes very sophisticated and challenging. And so when we had that conversation, we said, can we play that role? Can Methodist Health Care Ministries become that broker, that intermediary? And everybody said yes. And so while there is a requirement for the subgrantee to have the $250,000 match or whatever that you're applying for, we know full well that that's going to be challenging for you. But we don't want that to stop you from applying. Because again, we're in this journey with you. And we will walk down that path. And we will be in relationship with funders outside of this room to make that happen. Stick around. Yes? Becca, I told you to stick around. Take it. Someone internal to the organization. But the beauty of this is because this is such a significant evaluation contract, upfront they know that they're going to be traveling. It's not by phone. It's not by webcast. They will be traveling to each individual site and working with whoever that person is. And so again, you'll be getting funding to designate that staff time, which is unheard of in grants. You'll be able to designate somebody, but you'll be able to build your capacity. So beyond the life of this grant, you've got someone in-house who can do data analysis, who can apply that, who can do process improvement. So that is the beauty of this. And it is in the grant. And there are dollars for that. And stay here. Yes? Part of your strategic planning, you did identify already some stakeholders. Right. And along with that, some multiple stakeholders are in different categories of situations. Right. And one of the things you've used also in terms of performance improvement component of it. And this is really needed by almost everybody. So even those stakeholders, some are wondering if my chance there to be on this for other programs in line up the end stage to be able to take off, but be able to at least learn the steps and be part of those larger things that are in your future. So a great question. And they've asked me to repeat it so that it's on nowcast. What about the additional capacity building that's necessary in all of the nonprofits, even the unsuccessful bidders for this process? And so considering that our goal here is not only to be engaged in these relationships where we're funding, but also to be assisting in the capacity of all of the funded partners we currently have and others. We absolutely support that as a strategy. We intend to be here, as I stated, for the foreseeable future for our own lives and for the next lives of the next generation of staff. Because that's our commitment. That's our church commitment. That's our Methodist Ministries commitment. And so building that capacity is absolutely essential to strengthening the communities and to being more successful into the future. Anne has a chart that she showed my board, which was, we all knew it, but when you put in a chart, it gets to be shocking. The chart showed the failure of national foundations to invest in South Texas per capita. And it shows the desert area, the dearth of that in our communities. And we said to our board, if you don't take this step, nobody else has. And if we do take this step, then can we, in fact, get other national foundations that are not here, all of whom have obesity, diabetes, depression, and Hispanic communities as their high target populations for their granting? And they're in LA, New York, Miami, and Chicago. They're not in South Texas. And so we're going to say to them, what's going on here? You're missing a very large segment of high need population. So building that capacity for the next several decades and ability is absolutely critical. Just from a very tactical perspective, we've done three things as part of this process. One is, as a funder, we realize that not everybody is there along that continuum. But we're committed to this issue. And so we've put aside some funding. So for those that apply for this grant, that for whatever reason are not yet there, we have an opportunity with other funds to be able to help you get there. So maybe not this coming year, but maybe next year. This is a whole harmless. We're not going to penalize you for not being where you need to be. We fully thought that through. We are committed to this issue in moving the mark. And we want as many of you as possible to move in that direction. And so the second thing is, because this is catalytic in nature from a funder's perspective, we're already funding behavioral health and integrated behavioral health. The evaluation and the research and the learnings from this are gonna be informing our grant-making decisions. And what we hope is it'll be informing other funders in that same space. And then lastly, it's a requirement of the grant. It's the genesis of the grant to create a learning community. So while you may not be part of the SIF pool that's funded, you will have access to peers and a network that can mentor and bring you along. So just to kind of put a bit of legs to that. In 2010, when we did strategic planning with my board, we put mental health as a key top five issue to really put a lot more resources into. And maybe at that time we were putting a million out of 50, 60 million into mental health. This last year it went to nine and a half, 10 million per year. And so in that period of time, that five-year period of time, we went out to every community, went out to every partner. We said, ask us for a counselor, a case worker, ask us for a psychiatrist, a psychologist to be integrated into your behavioral health model. We then went to all the local mental health providers and said, ask us for enrichment and enhancement of your model as well. Now we ended up with a lot of people trying and failing to get mental health professionals to move into the various communities where they were most needed. And so we understand that, we know that. You've now got a psychiatrist as the dean of the medical school down here. I think Dr. Fernandez might be interested in bringing in psychiatric professionals. We're talking about changing our other strategy related to the nursing shortage and other health professional shortages. And so we absolutely succeeded in Bear County in getting the med school and the community colleges in increasing enrollments for allied health and counselors and nurses. But that meant their ADA formula funding increased as well. And so we'll be moving some of those resources into Norado and Brownsville, Haunted, McAllen to all of the other schools to increase health professionals. And so again, we know the problems and their five year, 10 year solutions. They're not tomorrow. Our commitment is to be in that pathway with you for that whole period of time, not just on this, but on all of the other pieces of the strategic plan. Any more questions? Yes. Go ahead. Well, thank you for that comment and it was awesome. In kind. In kind match. Sorry, it's a cash match. But again, you have 12 months, we have 12 months to identify that and raise it. And of course, Beck is working on a third and a fourth and a fifth strategy that, you know, obviously, yeah, we want this to be successful and we're going to do everything we can to make it successful. Yes, sir. So the question is, is the Methodist Foundation engaged with us? And so they're a co-founder of the Collective Impact Model and we are a co-founder with them on the Methodist, the Methodist. The Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, which is working on three issues going forward in this legislative session. One is to improve access to mental health services for veterans. One is to improve and to figure out how to take incarcerated individuals who are only in jails, county jails and other places because of mental illness to get them out and also to get community services and psychotropic drugs available to them. And the third is to increase availability for children and family mental health services. Now, that's a separate initiative. It's a $23 million statewide initiative. I think there was a press release today that we moved the state of Texas to commit to match the $25 million per year investment in that. And I think that's the, you know, this legislature is gonna be as conservative as the last one. Now, I work for the winners. I'm a nonprofit, so I can't get engaged in all that. But I know that world very well and so we believe that, you know, veterans should be low hanging fruit. Who's gonna argue with that? Incarcerated individuals are wasting our resources in the wrong place when they're mentally ill. You jaywalk, you wind up in jail, you're psychotic. You and I would be out in 20 minutes, right? There in jail for months, trying to get psychological evaluations. And I'm minimizing, you know, the reality of a lot of that. But that's a wrong place and a wrong intervention. That initiative is a different one. Meadows and We are partnering with that with a lot of other stakeholders in the state of Texas. HUB is a co-founder and, you know, they're half a dozen funding partners in there. Well, thank you so much. Jessica's looking at me saying you've done your thing. We're round. We're moving next door to get into the details of proposals for those of you who are part of that plan. And thank you for being here. And this should be a lot of fun. And the payoff on this is going to be better healthcare for a lot of people in our community that need it. So thank you so much.