The Community Health Committee of the San Antonio City Council met on Tuesday, April 7, 2026, at 10:02 AM. The meeting included public comments, a presentation on the Healthy Bexar Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP), an update on trauma-informed care, and a report on immigrant demographic and economic contributions. The meeting adjourned at 11:39 AM.
All right. The time is now 10.02 a.m. on this Tuesday, uh, April 7, 2026, and the community health committee will now be called to order. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Councilmember Castillo. Councilmember Aldarete Gavito. Councilmember Mesa Gonzalez. Councilmember White. Chair Galban. Sir, we have a quorum. Thank you so much. Uh, first things first. Uh, any corrections to the minutes? If not, can I get motion to approve? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Moving along. All right. Heading to public comment. We have three folks stand up to speak. Um, number first one, we'll have three minutes with all three minutes. Um, we have first up Frederick uh Kurtois. Apologies I mispronounce your name. Thank you. Morning. Yep. Good morning. My name is uh Frederick Courtois. I'm the executive director for uh San Antonio Nexus Connection. Our mission is to promote, develop, and pilot sustainable street outreach modalities in substance use and community health in general. I am a social worker here in San Antonio with over 20 years of experience in outreach here in San Antonio abroad and in Mexico. I am here today because our work in HIV prevention and substance use has been shaped for seven years by San Antonio's commitment to the Fast Track Cities Initiative. That commitment is more necessary now than ever. San Antonio was the first city in Texas to join, and it decided then to lead the state in that effort. I've had the honor of presenting some of San Antonio's work at three Fast Track Cities International Conferences. Over the past few years, Metro Health has done something quite remarkable through small grants and sustained relationship building. It has grown a network of what I see as community health first responders across this city. Um before the crisis becomes a 911 call, who build the kind of trust that clinics cannot manufacture in the midst of a crisis. That network is real. It exists because COSA chose to invest in it through microgrants that seemed overtly ambitious at the time. San Antonio Nexus Connection was among those recipients, and it is at a point of and it is a point of pride that Sansi never interrupted its services throughout the COVID-19 epidemic. That network is now aligned with the community health improvement plan and its behavioral health priorities, setting the foundation for a larger vision. There is no community health improvement plan without first revisiting the policies that improve or prevent health. At present, with federal public health infrastructure under pressure, that insight has become the argument for why San Antonio cannot wait for anyone else to lead. Together, we have started developing a way to collect more precise data, democratize it so it serves the people who generate it, and build the professional infrastructure this workforce has never had. So San Antonio emerges as a model for communities seeking to improve health among the most invisible of its residents. At a time I have 15 seconds to go. At a time of political and funding vacuum.