Burnett School of Medicine at TCU and Trimble Tech High School Cook Up Program to Help the Community

FORT WORTH – For people who live in the 76104 ZIP code, access to health care and healthy foods can be difficult and may result in health challenges. 

Beginning this Fall, medical students from the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University and students from the Culinary Arts program at Trimble Tech High School will partner up to create a program to help with those challenges. 

“I am proud that I can help and give back in this way,” said Chef Hao Tran, Instructor of the Culinary Arts at Trimble Tech High School.  “If we can provide residents with nutritional guidance and help them to be healthy this will benefit the community.” 

Here’s how the partnership will work. Burnett School of Medicine at TCU students will teach the high school students about certain health conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, or heart failure.  They will then work together to create affordable meal plans for patients in the community who deal with those conditions. 

“We know that healthy eating along with exercise is more important to long-term health than just about anything,” said Ric Bonnell, M.D.   

Trimble Tech High School is literally across the street from Burnett School of Medicine at TCU’s new medical education building named Arnold Hall.   

Bonnell is excited about the partnership, which is possible thanks to the Rebecca Brumley Service Learning Endowment Fund. 

The program will be beneficial to the medical students, Dr. Bonnell says, and will help them “understand that health is more than prescribing medicine or seeing patients at a hospital, but it’s also about interacting with community members and what makes them healthier.”