Angela Garza w/ St. Jude Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And little le Garza is here. She's with Saint Jude
Children's Research Hospital. She's their South Region executive director. Are
you based here in Houston?

Speaker 2 (00:08):
I am, I'm here in Houston. I live in Sugarland.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Well there you go.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Yes, it's nice.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
I think people forget we think of Saint Jude Children's
Research Hospital and we think of this hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Right,
But the fact of the matter is you're located all
across the country. Your patients are located all across the country.
Is I'm guessing that all fifty states are represented at
any one time or another.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
Yes, you're exactly right. We have patients who live all
across the country. We do have one hospital, it's in Memphis, Tennessee.
But we do share our research, our protocols freely with
all fifty states and around the world, so we are
considered local because of that. We have patients who are
currently receiving treatment here locally because of Saint Jude.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
So yeah, we have a local presence.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
How many patients do you have in the Memphis hospital
at any one time, Well.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
We treat about eighty three hundred kids a year. So
if you think think about it, sixteen thousand kids are
diagnosed every year with cancer, so we're treating over half.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Yeah, do you have a question, Mike, Oh no, no, oh,
I thought you might have a question.

Speaker 4 (01:11):
No, I was just I was I had no idea
it was that many. Pretty amazing is needed every year. Yes,
I do have something to ask Jimmy at the end
of this. Okay, well, hang on a trip. You got
a trivic Okay, great. The raising of the money. You know,
we were talking a little bit about this yesterday, about
the research aspect of it, and I think you sort
of touched on that. Saint Drew Children's Research Hospital, and

(01:33):
I like to put the emphasis on research because you
end up with a lot of patients that cannot be
treated anywhere else because they don't they aren't doing the
research you're doing. You the success rate in curing cancer
amongst kids has just grown exponentially since this, this whole
thing began in nineteen sixty two.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yes, it has.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
Yeah, we are really proud of the work that we
do and we're very collaborati around that. So you're right.
We are a research hospital. We treat kids. We are
in patient care treating kids with pediatric cancer and other
life threatening diseases.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
But we're also a research facility.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
We have a cloud, you know, people can access the
research at any point, researchers, doctors all over the country,
and we have amazing collaborations.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
So we're very proud of the work that we do.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
That Danny Thomas had that vision and foresight in nineteen
sixty two, so yeah, we're really proud of it.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
If that was your trivic question, I was it. I
already knew the answer. His daughter is also connected with
the hospital, right, exactly right that Carla Thomas. See, let me.
I know this is hard to be specific about, and
I won't ask you to be specific, but I want
to give our listeners a feeling for how much good
this money does. If I were a mom and a

(02:54):
dad who had a child that is being treated for
let's say, leukemia or some other form of leukemia, some
rare form of it at your hospital, what kind of
money would be they have to be spending. Yeah, if
Saint hu Children's Research Hospital wasn't taking care of them,
taking care of their needs, taking care of their child's
medical attention, Yeah, it's it's.

Speaker 3 (03:15):
So as you know, no child, no family ever receives
a bill for treatment, travel, housing, or food right, so
they can focus on helping their child live. So it's
on average it cost about four hundred and fifty thousand
dollars to treat one child.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Wow, and you're right with the experience.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
Like the experimental protocols that aren't or treatments that aren't
covered by insurance.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
It's a real thing.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
So even if you are treated at a local hospital
the insurance, a lot of times you're battling that to
get the coverage.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
So we want to take that away and you do a.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
Great job with that. All right, thank you for coming by. Angela.
By the way, text the word kids to six two
six two six two you can make a donation. There'll
be a link there you can make a donation or
call eight hundred five eight eight fourteen thirty three.