Category: Chef In The Press

San Antonio Magazine – May 2017 – by By Chris Warren

San Antonio, We Have a Diabetes Problem: The city is known for high rates of Type 2 diabetes in adults and kids, but UT Health is working to change that as a research epicenter

Dr. Jane Lynch spends a good chunk of her time attending medical conferences. One of two U.S.-based members on the Global Expert Committee on Type 2 Diabetes in Youth, Lynch regularly collaborates with researchers around the world about topics such as how the disease presents itself in the U.S. as compared to India or China.

A professor of pediatrics at UT Health San Antonio, Lynch can be pretty confident that no matter where a meeting is held or what the specific topic is, at some point her hometown will come up. “When you are at a conference, they will start quoting San Antonio data,” she says. “We are an epicenter for Type 2 diabetes.”

Of course, this is not exactly a point of pride for San Antonio—and one of SA2020’s goals is to reduce the number of adults with a reported diabetes diagnosis to just over 12 percent, a target that has already been met. But the flip side of struggling with obesity and diabetes citywide is that San Antonio is also an international leader in diabetes research, with locals pioneering a better understanding of the disease and leading the way in unlocking improved treatments and medications.

One of the ways Lynch hopes to impact the adult Type 2 diabetes rates is through lowering the rate in children. The disease is known as adult-onset diabetes because it usually manifests when people reach their 40s or 50s, but Lynch is at the forefront of research into Type 2 diabetes in people under the age of 18 and sees an alarming number of children at her UT Health clinic. “We have diagnosed over 800 kids…

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SA! Salud America! – Posted on February 26, 2016 by Lisa.

The taste of food impacts our eating habits and, in turn, our health from a very young age, even from the womb.

On Friday, February 26th, Dr. Julie La Barba, a pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital of San Antonio and Medical Director of Culinary Health Education for Families (CHEF), presented to and discussed with pediatricians, medical students, and other healthcare professionals in San Antonio how taste and food preferences are formed and how these preferences can impact a child’s diet.

Dr. La Barba is committed to building a healthier culture and showing how food and medicine can work together. The new CHEF program, under Christus Santa Rosa Health Care, targets practitioners and teaches them the importance of healthy eating and how taste applies to medicine and healthcare through in local Chefs, educational videos, and taste testing.

Read Full Story at SA! Salud America!

By Richard A. Marini
San Antonio Express-News
April 12, 2017

Uziel Lopez couldn’t help himself. The 7-year-old and his mother, Sandra, were making a strawberry spinach salad when the orange wedges he was ad-libbing into the bowl apparently became too tempting. So he popped one in his mouth.

Lopez and his mom, along with several other families, were in the teaching kitchen just off the main lobby at The Children’s Hospital of San Antonio. The group was part of an ongoing program at the hospital designed to teach participants to think about eating as more than something to do to pass the time while watching the latest episode of “The Bachelor.”

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by Donna De La Cruz
New York Times
Aug. 9, 2017

The doctor’s office is moving into the kitchen.

After years of telling patients to skip junk food and prepare homemade meals, a growing number of doctors and medical groups are now going a step further and teaching them how to cook. Some are building teaching kitchens or creating food pantries right next to their practices. Others are prescribing culinary education programs in hopes of improving their patients’ nutrition and overall health. Some medical schools have even introduced culinary curriculums to train more doctors to talk to patients about food.

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(SAN ANTONIO, TX – January 9, 2017) – The Bexar County Medical Society recently honored Dr. Julie La Barba with the 2016 Extraordinary Women in Medicine Leadership Award. The Society describes her as a passionate advocate for children who is respected, insightful and attentive to the needs of families while inspiring others to build a better future. The award recognizes impactful leaders who have made strides in helping Bexar County residents receive better health care and who uphold the delivery, service and education of the honored practice of medicine.

As the Medical Director of the Culinary Health Education for Families (CHEF) program at The Children’s Hospital of San Antonio, Dr. La Barba has led the Hospital’s efforts to establish programs aimed at having a long-term impact on the health and well-being of children and families – especially those at risk for obesity-related illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease. In Bexar County, one out of three children are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and the CHEF initiative was established to address this epidemic.

“Having grown up in an Italian produce family, I learned at an early age to appreciate real food. I enjoy gardening and teaching my own children about where food comes from. As a working mother, I know it’s challenging to prepare nutritious meals,” said Dr. La Barba. “That’s why we’ve built a program that empowers families to make delicious, satisfying meals with affordable ingredients that won’t break the bank or require gourmet cooking skills.”

Dr. La Barba is a board-certified pediatrician and mother of four. Her professional advocacy interests include breastfeeding, obesity prevention, culinary medicine, urban farming and nutrition education for the underserved. Follow her on Twitter @julielabarbamd

Dr. La Barba co-authored a scientific article on emerging Culinary Medicine programs in which CHEF is featured: Health-related Culinary Education:  Health-related Culinary Education: A Summary of Representative Emerging Programs for Health Professionals and Patients<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4756781/#__abstractid1088176title>
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VIDEO: With food and health closely linked, medical schools are now taking a deeper dive into the culinary world. Our John Garcia shows you why a group of pediatric residents are not just learning about nutrition, but also learning some tricks of the trade.

Time Warner News – by John Garcia
http://www.twcnews.com/tx/san-antonio/health-and-medicine/2016/10/26/student-doctors-take-fight-against-illness-into-the-kitchen–.html

The medical community is trying all kinds of methods to beat back childhood obesity and related health problems like diabetes. One San Antonio hospital is putting doctors in the kitchen to try and make a difference. Fresh vegetables on the chopping block, shredded, baked chicken on the plate, and advice from cooking experts. That’s what you’ll find at the new teaching kitchen at the Children’s Hospital of San Antonio. It’s called Culinary Health Education for Families, or CHEF for short. “While a lot of people have a lot of different hobbies and passions, everybody eats,” said E.B. Ghazali, MD. He’s a second-year Baylor College of Medicine pediatric resident. Ghazali is one of the first physicians to train in this kitchen designed by the Culinary Institute of America.

Texas Public Radio – by Wendy Rigby
http://tpr.org/post/doctors-kitchen-learn-food-medicine#stream/0

Dr. Mark Gilger, pediatrician-in-chief of the Children’s Hospital of San Antonio (CHofSA) walked into one of the country’s leading children’s hospitals and straight into a McDonald’s fast food restaurant. Most of us are happy to indulge in a Big Mac from time to time, but “super size me” is the opposite message we want to give to hospital attendees in a county where 13% of the population has been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and 30% of high school students are classified as obese. “Not in my hospital,” Dr. Gilger said.

The Rivard Report – by Cherise Rohr-Allegrini
https://therivardreport.com/how-the-childrens-hospital-is-revolutionizing-health-care-with-food/

Thanks to the Goldsbury Foundation and Children’s Hospital of San Antonio, there is a new revolution in medical care. Maria Palma, chef and program director of Culinary Health Education for Families (CHEF), led an exercise Friday morning that is not the sort of thing most physicians experience when attending a medical conference.

The Rivard Report – by Cherise Rohr-Allegrini
http://therivardreport.com/revolutionizing-local-medicine-with-nutrition-education/#

Inspired by Italian gardens, a pediatrician turns her own backyard into a source of food and experimentation

Julie La Barba Miggins doesn’t like to admit it now, but the lush garden at her Olmos Park home on Hermosa Drive grew out of embarrassment.

A few years ago, she traveled to Sicily to visit her extended family and was amazed by their home gardens. They crafted beautiful meals using produce they had grown and expressed an intense love of cultivating the land. As she was enjoying the Italian way of life, La Barba Miggins thought about her own yard. “I was so embarrassed that with all the land we have, we were just growing grass,” she says.

As a pediatrician and the medical director of CHEF (Culinary Health Education for Families) at The Children’s Hospital of San Antonio, La Barba Miggins dedicates her life to fighting childhood obesity. And for years, she had made meals for her husband and four children using local, organic produce purchased at farmers markets, but it had never occurred to her to grow food herself.

When she returned from Italy, she began planning a garden. She was extremely methodical, carefully carefully plotting each square foot of the garden on pieces of graph paper. But even with the best laid plans, she worried about her skills, so she asked family members and neighbors for help. They taught her how to plant and weed. They guided her in selecting hardy plants that didn’t require too much care. And they helped her develop a more relaxed approach to gardening. “At first I was so systematic about everything—so medical,” she says. “My neighbor kept reminding me that in gardening there are no mistakes.”

Now, after three years, La Barba Miggins says she’s embraced a more experimental style of gardening. She still looks at her sketches, but her plans are more casual. “I realized no one was looking at them except for me,” she says, laughing.

These days, her garden is arranged into four square plots of herbs, such as parsley, mint and basil, and three long rows of vegetables. In the summer, those may contain tomatoes and peppers and in the fall months, crops like cabbage, Swiss chard, broccoli and gourds.

She also likes to try experimenting with something new every season. Instead of always planting in clean rows, she’ll just throw a handful of seeds into one of the beds. The past few seasons, she has also started planting flowers next to vegetables. Last season, she tried to see how high she could grow vegetables on trellises. She grew olive trees just to see if she could.

While balancing a demanding job and motherhood, La Barba Miggins has also developed a new outlook on her garden. “In the beginning I was into the design and how it looked,” she says. “Now, I just want it to produce what we can eat and give the rest to neighbors. And if a plant needs a lot of babying, it shouldn’t be in my garden. I want to enjoy it.”

San Antonio Magazine – by Allison Copenbarger Vance
http://www.sanantoniomag.com/September-2016/Growing-Produce-and-Patience/

Since beginning its transformation journey in 2012, The Children’s Hospital of San Antonio has ushered in a new era of pediatric care in the country’s seventh largest city.

Today, specialty care for children and adolescents is more readily available than ever in San Antonio. New providers call the Alamo City home and The Children’s Hospital of San Antonio has established itself as a regional hub of pediatric medical excellence.

“From the beginning, our mission has been one of service, both to the patients we care for and their families,” says Elias J. Neujahr, President of The Children’s Hospital of San Antonio. “Putting their concerns first has allowed us to create a hospital that truly belongs to the community and serves its needs. It’s taken just a few short years to establish ourselves as a leading provider of pediatric care. Because we’re a teaching and research hospital, we are not content to rest on our laurels. There is more to come.”

San Antonio MD News – by Valerie Lauer
http://sanantonio.mdnews.com/children%E2%80%99s-hospital-san-antonio-%E2%80%94-changing-landscape-pediatric-care

In the San Antonio, Texas area (69% Latino) families, health care leaders like Dr. Mark Gilger, and philanthropy groups like the Goldsbury Foundation are exploring what healthy and culturally fun Latino meals look like with the Children’s Hospital of San Antonio’s new Culinary Health Education for Families (CHEF) program. Aiming to be a new culinary health model for families needing help in preventing diet-related disease such as childhood diabetes, hypertension,and obesity, the goal of the program is to provide San Antonio residents with tools, resources, and education to lead healthier lives and encourage healthy weights for children.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Salud Success Story
http://www.communitycommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/CHEFSA.pdf