- So what everyone considered to be a routine tackle, it changed Reggie's life forever.

- A connection with the land is vital to our emotional spiritual and physical survival.

- Black men still remain the man least likely to get a screening for prostate cancer.

(upbeat music) (audience applauding) - On April 20th, 1996, my freshman year in college, I sat in my dorm room and watched my husband, boyfriend at the time, his name flash across the ESPN ticker, the 17th overall pick Reggie Brown.

He would go to the Detroit Lions.

Now this was a dream come true for any athlete.

I don't care who you are.

If you're a girl, boy, short, tall, skinny, round, good or bad, each player, all players aspire to one day have their name called as a professional athlete.

And he did.

Fast forward to December 21st, 1997 and the last regular game of the season.

Reggie was wrapping up his second season as a Detroit Lion.

If they win, then they'll head to the playoffs.

If they lose, then the season is over.

- [Reggie] Making a normal tackle that I've made a thousand times, all of a sudden I noticed my oxygen was cut off.

I can't move my, any of my extremities, you know, anywhere.

My teammates are telling me, come on, get up.

We gotta get off the field.

But I, you know, I notice I can't move.

You know, I'm going into kind of a shock.

- So it was third and long, and if the Lions make the stop, then they'll get off the field.

Their running back took a handoff.

He tripped over someone's foot.

And at the same time, Reggie dove to make a tackle while Reggie's teammate, he pushed a lineman on the opposing team in the back.

So what everyone considered to be a routine tackle.

It changed Reggie's life forever.

So I can vividly recall arriving at the hospital.

Everyone was moving really fast.

I walked towards the hospital room, and this is where they were finally screwing in his last screw in his halo.

So as a player, I could empathize with Reggie, but I didn't know what to say.

I didn't think my words would bring solace, so I just sat.

And hours had passed, and I remember sitting in that hospital room where Reggie laid, and he was angry because ESPN was on and they will reporting his injury.

Now keep in mind, this was the same broadcast that announced that he was the number 17th overall pick.

But now they were declaring that he endured a career-ending injury.

It was devastating.

So like a million other kids, for years Reggie had heard that he was really good.

He was fast.

He was explosive, and he could take this game far.

And when he decided to go for it, to devote his life to playing professional football, it was ripped away from him, and it tore his heart out.

Now being witness to this, this life changing event, the words that stood out to me the most was career-ending.

And those two words kept looping through my head: career-ending, career-ending, career-ending.

And I thought, why is that a term used in athletics towards an athlete?

I mean, everyone knows that at some point every player, girl, boy, short, tall, skinny, round, good or bad, each player, all players will stop playing.

So why call it a career?

So this really had me thinking that this entire crazy amateur athletic system that we helped create was so misleading to all students that played sports.

And I began to believe that we are seriously mis-educating our youth athletes.

So instead of spending hundreds of dollars weekly to train kids to throw a ball or to shoot a shot, why don't we teach them about the industry of sports, the true careers in sports, all of the potential opportunities in addition to playing the game.

Why have we limited ourselves, our students, our kids, everyone to just respect and value only one aspect of the sport.

So I had to even kind of begin to think and ask myself what was the long-term value in focusing solely on playing the game?

So after Reggie and I got married and we had our kids, I watched my husband struggle because he lost his purpose.

I mean, since he had only saw himself as being a player, and his career had ended so abruptly, he had nothing to turn to, and he tried different things.

So we entered a minority dealership program.

When he completed the program, and he became the general manager, he realized that it wasn't for him.

He owned a food franchise.

It wasn't a fit.

He pursued teaching to coach so he could impact kids' lives, but it put a mental and physical strain on his body which led him to fully retire.

So for 10 years, I watched my husband try to reinsert himself into the mainstream.

His angst and depression drove me to realize that our kids, we had to do more.

They had to learn more.

They had to be exposed to more within the industry of sports.

And since the game had provided so much to my family, at no point was I going to say that my boys couldn't play, but my boys did need to learn the industry and be exposed early to other opportunities and possibilities.

I will not have my children endure the same pain and anguish that my husband had.

So fun fact, there are nearly 8 million students that currently participate in high school athletics in the US.

Another fun fact, in 2017, 2018, there was a record setting 494,992 students that competed in the NCAA.

Now here's the kicker.

Only 2% of those students go on to play professional sports.

And on average, a player's tenure as a professional athlete is between three to five years, so that depends on the sport.

Now as a former player, a collegiate coach, a wife to a professional athlete and a mother of athletes, I realized that with these numbers we have to shift our focus elsewhere.

We have to find a way to stop mis-educating our amateur athletes.

We needed a secondary institution that valued the student athlete's passion, and that's their love of sports, but we also had to open their eyes to other opportunities within the industry.

The sports industry, it connects in many different activities.

So it's ranging from hot dogs sold at sport events to multi-million dollar transfer fees paid by the biggest clubs when acquiring new superstars.

The business features numerous participants, from right owners to athletes to clubs to leagues and federations to sport agencies, sponsors, investors, and broadcasters.

Sport is commonly considered to be more than a $500 billion with some estimates running up to a $1.3 trillion industry.

So in 2018, my concerns, my questions and my prayers were finally answered.

After seven years of perseverance and a long pursuit, I was blessed to open the first Texas State charter school that focuses on the professions within athletics, Legacy The School of Sport Sciences.

Legacy offers a thematic learning environment focused on athletic administration, coaching, sports media and sports medicine.

Over 400 students, grade six through 12 experience a relevant education on our campus daily.

Students learn about the connection between education, athletics, science, and business.

This interdisciplinary learning style enhances the student's ability to explore and solve real world problems.

In fact, due to Reggie's unfortunate situation, we created our educational methodology.

It's what we like to call our ROI.

It's responsibility, opportunity, and influence.

We want our students to be responsible for their actions in their lives.

Our students, they like to call it freedoms, but we explain to them that with freedoms comes personal responsibility.

On our campus students practice having to be responsible for their decisions that they make to impact their personal lives.

The majority of our teachers and administrators are former collegiate or professional athletes which helps us to educate through the lens of an athlete.

We provide opportunity to our students by introducing them to industry experts and other professionals that can relate to the students' experiences and leave a lasting impression.

We want our students to be influenced by great people and to be an influencer of others.

We pressure them to be leaders on and off of their respective fields of play because many of them have the tools to be successful in life.

They just have only been challenged to use the tools in the athletic environment.

So now, as we venture into our second year, we are thrilled with how our kids are responding.

It's not perfect.

Believe me, it's not perfect at all, but our students are learning, and they're learning to value the unique learning environment because we value their passion.

The great Maya Angelou once told Oprah Winfrey, "You do not know what your legacy will be "because your legacy is in every life you touch."

Legacy The School of Sport Sciences was built off the back of a life-changing personal tragedy of a professional athlete.

Due to his setback, we've learned how to define and correct.

the mis-education of amateur athletes.

Legacy is a space where students can grow, thrive and endure life experiences, mentally and physically.

We are deeply honored to be a part of the solution to educate the next generation of students and to make sure each student athlete has a chance to be greater than the sport that they play.

Thank you.

(audience applauding) (upbeat music) - We are on native land, on occupied land, and I acknowledge and honor the ancestors whose land was stolen tonight.

Gloria Anzaldúa once said "By redeeming your most painful experiences, "you transform them into something valuable "algo para compartir or share with others, "so they too may be empowered."

You stop in the middle of the field, and under your breath, ask the spirits, animals, plants y tus muertos to help you string together a bridge of words.

What follows is your attempt to give back to nature, los epiritos and others, a gift rested from the events in your life, a bridge home to self.

This is my gift.

The outdoors saved my life.

As a child, I felt worthless and lost, acutely aware that I was different, not white, and that my intelligence and value were up for debate.

As a young adult, I felt worthless and lost too without purpose or direction.

Our environments influence the way we see ourselves and the role we can play in our community.

As a child, I walked by the oil tank farms that were once located on Airport and Springdale in East Austin without knowing what they were.

For me the oil tank farms were just a part of the landscape that I took in on my way to school, much like the trees and the vacant lots, and the we buy ugly houses signs that peppered the streets.

Before East Austin became trendy and valuable, it was a repository for undesirable people and undesirable industries.

Not much was expected from us.

So our lives were expendable.

However, my identity is stretched across the Americas, divided by borders, compartmentalized by language.

I used to wish for a name that was easier to say, one that didn't cause laughter to erupt from my classmates each time it was mispronounced.

I have a name that tests the patience of people who are too lazy to make an effort, so they insert or remove letters as they please I started writing my name with an accent mark in seventh grade in an effort to reclaim myself.

What a shock it was to me when my white seventh grade English teacher asked me if I wrote my name with an accent mark on the I where it belonged.

I nodded yes, pretending to have known all along.

I felt ashamed that I'd been writing my name incorrectly for so long.

Despite being treated as an exceptional child, worthy of being placed in gifted and talented programs in my schools, I internalized a feeling of inferiority because of where I lived and who I was and who I was not.

If you were from East Austin, you were ghetto and lacked value and had little to contribute to the community.

In school, I learned about the supremacy of white people and whiteness.

Black and Brown peoples were defined by their trauma, their genocide, their enslavement in the name of white progress.

Audre Lorde once said, "If I didn't define myself for myself, "I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me "and eaten alive."

Growing up I felt both invisible and hyper-visible as one of a handful of students of color in my classes.

I didn't learn about people who look like me with stories like mine until much later during college.

As an adult, I learned from my parents that their grandparents were indigenous people, but they didn't pass down their language or culture to their children, so my parents never identified as indigenous people themselves.

My great grandparents believed it would be better if their children assimilated.

So they like my parents became Mexicans who spoke Spanish instead of indigenous people with a specific culture and language.

My relationship with Spanish is complicated.

It's my native language, but Spanish and English are both the languages of the colonizers.

So what language is left for me to speak if both taste like loss?

After getting involved with PODER, People Organized in the Defense of Earth and her Resources, during my second year at the University of Texas, I learned that the oil tank farms I walked by as a child poisoned the community surrounding the tank farms, causing people to develop cancer, respiratory illnesses, and other diseases.

Environmental racism claimed the lives of people in East Austin.

People outside of my community decided that our lives and our health were insignificant and that placing toxic industries next to home schools and places of worship was acceptable.

PODER helped light a fire inside of me at a critical point in my life.

The education that I obtained through PODER helped me find my sense of purpose.

I decided that I would not let someone else make decisions about my future and my community and my wellbeing.

I wanted to do what was in my reach to get involved and make a difference for myself and for my community.

But I could only make a difference if I lived, and I was at a point where I wanted to die.

I struggled with depression as a child, and that depression worsened as I got older.

A black hole of depression almost consumed me after my first year of undergrad when I developed an eating disorder.

When I would go to sleep, I wished that I wouldn't wake up because seeing another day felt like torture.

I felt worthless in part because that's the lie that depression convinces you to believe, but those feelings are compounded by the years of messages I received in my community and in my schools about my worth as a woman of color.

When I was finally ready to ask for help, I searched online for resources and learned that eating disorders only happened to white and wealthy girls.

I was neither.

When I sought out group counseling services because they were more affordable, I spent many sessions explaining race and racism to the white people in my group.

So in order to heal, I had to piece together my own healing outside of white serving medical institutions.

Research shows that clinicians are less likely to recognize eating disorder pathology in women of color than in white women, even after controlling for the severity of self-reported disordered eating symptoms.

The stereotype of women of color being unable to develop eating disorders still persists in the medical community.

We continue to face disparities and access to health care and treatment in general, as well as lack of evidence-based, culturally appropriate assessments and interventions.

Research shows that nature heals.

Being in nature or viewing scenes of nature makes you feel better emotionally.

It also improves your physical wellbeing by reducing blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension, and the production of stress hormones.

However, research also shows that people of color are much more likely to live near polluters and breathe polluted air.

So where can people of color heal if medical institutions don't service and our natural environment has been so polluted that it's poisoning us?

Karleen Pendleton Jiménez once said, "Learning about the land could save the land, "could strengthen our bodies, "could sustain our political struggles "and could nurture our imaginations."

Community involvement and reconnecting with the land as an indigenous woman saved my life.

For me, healing meant learning about my family history, so that I could feel pride instead of shame.

Though I can't trace my ancestral roots in a precise way, I feel held and supported by my ancestors, and I know that their resilience encouraged live in me as an indigenous woman.

Healing has also meant reconnecting with the land through running and outdoor adventures.

Walks and runs along the lake were my therapy.

That connection is critical for me, especially at a time when I can't define what home is.

The East Austin that I knew no longer feels like home.

And I can't point to the specific region that my ancestors called home in what is now Mexico, but when I'm running and hiking outside, that feels like home.

Colonization taught my ancestors to hide and erase their indigeneity in order to survive.

Now, my work is to unearth the stories and cultures of my ancestors to the best of my ability in order to thrive.

Soy Chicana.

I am an indigenous woman.

Soy de East Austin.

A connection with the land is vital to our emotional, spiritual, and physical survival.

But the land can heal us if we fight to protect her, and if we listen to what she has to say Gloria Anzaldúa once said, "We are ready for change.

"Let us link hands and hearts together, "find a path through the dark woods, "step through the doorways between worlds "leaving huellas for others to follow.

"Build bridges, cross them with grace, "and claim these puentes our home.

"Si se puede, que asi sea, "so be it, estamos listas, vamonos "Now let us shift."

(audience applauding) (upbeat music) (audience applauding) - Good evening, Austin.

I am an educator, teaching both high school and college students in the classroom for many years now.

I'm also a patient advocate and a health educator.

I came into this arena from a background as a surgical assistant in the United States Army and a historian in the classroom.

In the operating room and later in clinical settings, I began to see notable differences in the status and health of Black men who were undergoing surgery for prostate cancer.

And I wondered aloud about the variances in their awareness of their condition, but more importantly, the stages of their condition.

Black men in the United States have significant gaps in supportive healthcare mechanisms as it relates to cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and obesity.

A greater challenge for a Black man has been treatments and screenings associated with prostate cancer.

Black men currently face some significant life concerns in the current climate of modern America.

The life expectancy for a Black man in the United States remains lower when compared to other racial identities.

Life expectancy for a Black man stands at about 72 years of age today.

The number can be lower when looking at other factors such as heart disease, cancer, obesity, and even unemployment.

Despite the continued advancements in the healthcare system and the increasing number of years of longevity for an American citizen, Black men lag behind.

Why does the life expectancy of a Black man, particularly those diagnosed with prostate cancer, lag behind?

According to the American Cancer Society, about 1.7 million Americans were diagnosed with cancer last year.

Some 600,000 actually died of complications related to their disease.

6,000 of those men were Black men diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Prostate cancer right now, Black men are diagnosed at a rate three times higher when compared with white men.

The death rate for prostate cancer is twice as high.

These discrepancies have remained since the 1990s when the use of the prostate specific antigen tests began to get used as a screening tool.

The widespread opinion of the healthcare community was that black men were not screened early enough.

This contributed to an increased number of educational campaigns directed at Black men.

Many of these campaigns were lead by individuals such as Charles Barkley, Ken Griffey Jr., Ken Griffey Sr, even former Secretary of State and General Colin Powell.

They all carry a message of early screening being important.

Early screenings, it will lead to earlier detections.

It will lead to improved outcomes after the treatment of prostate cancer.

Regardless of these campaigns and pointed messages, Black men still remain the man least likely to get a screening for prostate cancer.

Yes, Black men have been screened for prostate cancer at an increasing rate.

Yes, this is happening.

However Black men are still found to have more aggressive forms of prostate cancer upon their diagnosis.

There are other reasons for the lagging rates of screenings for Black men: lack of access to facilities.

Perhaps there's a lack of knowledge about the benefits of early screening and the reluctance of healthcare providers to discuss a screening with a Black man.

The outcomes of these campaigns also uncovered some other things.

There are other reasons that Black men are least likely to enter themselves into this system.

This is the factor of Black men and their presence in America and their perspectives on the healthcare system itself.

How has history contributed to these disparities?

How have myths contributed to these disparities?

At present, there are some ongoing discussions around Black men and their presence in America.

As far back as the founding of this country, there have been issues surrounding Black men, their health, their image.

Many black men perhaps have adopted the myths associated with their image.

Black men today are reluctant to seek health care within a system.

It is not ancient history to many black men, the memory of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment from the 1930s.

It is also well-known that continued shootings of unarmed Black men, systemic problems in the educational system that targets black teenagers.

There's also the perceptions of providers that will be treating Black men in the healthcare system.

It is of the utmost that conversations about Black men and the healthcare system come to the forefront and be part of these conversations on health and health disparities.

We have to consider the lack of education that does exist among providers, and this needs to be addressed if we are to address the health concerns of Black men.

In conclusion, I want to bring to your attention that history may have contributed greatly to these ongoing gaps that are present when it comes to Black men, prostate cancer and the healthcare system.

There are reasons for Black men to have distrust within the healthcare system itself.

It is imperative that providers become more aware of how the system may have played a part in these gaps.

This includes research about the stages of prostate cancer that exist in Black men.

Prostate cancer rates remain higher for Black men.

Now is the time to look at why this remains so.

Thank you.

(audience applauding) (upbeat music)