Fighting Obesity and Diabetes: A Latino Dr. Eye-opener

Dr. Roberto Treviño has been working to end diabetes for decades. I first met him some 20 years ago when I was a reporter at San Antonio’s local Univision station, he was our go-to guy for all matters health and diabetes related. With time his work and research has focused and intensified and today he leads the Social and Health Research Center, which designs school health programs that combat early age obesity. Treviño was one of the featured speakers at the recent TEDx event in San Antonio.

This is how the TEDx San Antonio web site described the Doctor his talk:

Roberto P. Treviño, M.D. founded the South Alamo Medical Group in 1986 for the practice of primary care medicine in poor and underserved areas. The medical practice has grown to five clinics and 20 physicians. Dissatisfied with medical outcomes, however, he founded the Social and Health Research Center (SHRC) in 1995 to design and evaluate early age obesity and type 2 diabetes school health prevention programs.
Dr. Treviño is the principal investigator of the two largest trials funded by the National Institutes of Health to prevent obesity and diabetes in children. Although these health programs have been shown to decrease blood glucose and obesity rates in children, Trevino presents in his new book — Forgotten Children — 10 years of evidence showing that politicians influenced by special interest groups applied policies to deny at-risk children these programs.
Why?
‘Diabetes is a $174 billion-a-year industry,’ Trevino says.”

This is his talk.