Tag international

At its June 8 assembly, the Austin Metropolis Council accepted a number of contracts to supply books and supplies in world languages apart from English to the Austin Public Library.

Council members signed 9 contracts from worldwide companies like Latin American Ebook Supply Inc. The overall value for the five-year contracts is $1.86 million, and college students can entry these assets by way of the Austin Public Library.

Marla Cantu, a Latin American research junior from Mexico, mentioned bringing extra assets of various languages into Austin helps help the town’s various inhabitants. Based on UT enrollment information, about 10% of UT college students are worldwide college students. 

“Most assets are both English or Spanish, and that’s it,” Cantu mentioned. “For different languages, individuals will be utterly misplaced, and I really feel like they simply ought to develop the languages they’ve for assets like for the bus, you go into the bus, it’s English and Spanish, which is useful for the Austin group and in addition for some worldwide college students. However including one other language can be actually helpful for worldwide college students or those that don’t converse good English.”

The College requires all worldwide college students to take an English proficiency check. Cantu mentioned most assets are in English or Spanish, which hurts some worldwide college students’ skill to completely perceive necessary info. 

“UT requires, once you do your utility, a sure stage of English, and so most individuals already converse English, however I do discover that not all of the assets at UT are in different languages,” Cantu mentioned. “Typically they’re in Spanish, and that helps quite a bit for me, however there’s additionally individuals who converse different languages. They’ll’t discover something of their language.”

Accounting senior Felix Chang mentioned including assets in different world languages could also be useful however is in the end pointless. Though Chang grew up in Mandarin-speaking Taiwan, he mentioned he doesn’t gravitate towards the Mandarin books housed within the Perry-Castañeda Library. 

“If I need to learn one thing in Mandarin, I can simply search on-line,” Chang mentioned. “When it comes to studying. I don’t suppose it is smart for me to, for example, (take) a category in accounting that’s taught in Mandarin. I’m not going to take that class as a result of I’m already within the States and paying worldwide tuition. I’m right here to be within the atmosphere right here.”

Undeclared sophomore Carolina Cordova mentioned UT does have many organizations devoted to serving to worldwide college students discover their group. Cordova mentioned the main focus needs to be build up these assets to unite worldwide college students.

“I feel extra concretely there needs to be Worldwide Scholar Orientation, even when it’s on-line as a result of I feel normally loads of worldwide college students simply do it on-line,” Cordova mentioned. “However possibly designate a few dates on Zoom or one thing for worldwide college students for info, but additionally to start out getting acquainted with different worldwide college students which might be going to UT.”

The Musculoskeletal Institute on the UT Well being Austin medical clinic received the 2023 Worth-Primarily based Well being Care Prize from a world jury for its progressive method to patient-centered well being care.

The Worth-Primarily based Well being Care Prize acknowledges medical initiatives from world wide that make use of a “basically new line of considering in creating wonderful affected person worth by way of actual outcomes,” in response to its web site. Nominees for this 12 months included initiatives from Australia, Italy, the Netherlands and Brazil.

The Musculoskeletal Institute not solely treats musculoskeletal problems however can also be pioneering a brand new solution to ship medication. Based on government director Karl Koenig, most healthcare companies are reimbursed by way of a fee-for-service system that requires a separate charge for every physician’s go to, lab and surgical procedure. The institute as an alternative argues for a condition-based care mannequin the place one charge is paid to the healthcare group initially of care to incentivize higher useful resource allocation towards the affected person.

“On the bottom, at the very least in our group, which means a multidisciplinary group,” Koenig mentioned. “We’ve got orthopedic surgeons, doctor’s assistants, chiropractors, bodily therapists, social staff, all engaged on one group in order that when the affected person is available in, we will present the entire care that they could want.”

Koenig mentioned the institute makes use of a really completely different metric for measuring success as they focus much less on the variety of sufferers they see or the variety of surgical procedures they carry out and as an alternative depend on patient-reported outcomes.

“We ask our sufferers to inform us how a lot their hip and knee ache, again ache or neck ache is affecting their high quality of life, after which we measure our success on the affected person telling us how a lot better we assist them get on common,” Koenig mentioned. “It’s actually revolutionary.”

Koenig mentioned the institute finally tries to make use of a holistic but pragmatic method to medication utility by addressing musculoskeletal circumstances within the context of a affected person’s general well being. 

“We assist quite a lot of sufferers to quit smoking, we assist quite a lot of sufferers to drop extra pounds, we assist quite a lot of sufferers to turn into extra energetic with our bodily remedy packages, and generally we do surgical procedure on these sufferers to assist them get extra energetic and keep wholesome, however we’re actually maintaining our eye on the prize,” Koenig mentioned. “And the north star is how can we truly assist folks to be more healthy slightly than simply maintain them after they get sick?”

Koenig mentioned the Musculoskeletal Institute was beforehand acknowledged within the U.S. for its trailblazing work, however to be in comparison with friends worldwide and are available out on high exhibits lots.

“It says lots in regards to the College of Texas, it says lots about Dell Medical Faculty and UT Well being Austin that we’re within the midst of constructing new packages, beginning a brand new medical college and staying true to our mission to actually revolutionize the way in which that sufferers get and keep wholesome,” Koenig mentioned.