PXG Provides Support for Veteran-led Disaster Relief Organization Team Rubicon

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Aug. 12, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — PXG, a company dedicated to developing the world’s finest golf equipment and apparel, today announced a one-million-dollar donation to Team Rubicon, a veteran-led disaster relief organization. The funds will support Team Rubicon’s ability to provide immediate support in Maui, Hawaii.

By pairing the skills and experiences of military veterans with first responders, medical professionals, and technology solutions, the organization mobilizes highly trained teams to provide the greatest impact possible.

“Team Rubicon quickly coordinates and deploys trained military veterans, first responders, and civilians as volunteers for disaster relief efforts,” PXG Founder and CEO Bob Parsons stated. “We have witnessed the dedicated volunteers who make up its ranks fall in to embrace and empower devastated communities. Today, we look to bolster their efforts in Maui and help their boots on the ground to do what they do best.”

“In the past ten years, Team Rubicon has built a dedicated team of over 1,000 Greyshirt volunteer leaders in Hawaii. Currently, we have boots on the ground and are in close communication with local authorities and emergency managers to offer our immediate help in shelter set ups, food distribution, donation management and distribution, and staff for the local Emergency Operation Center,” said Art delaCruz, Team Rubicon CEO. “We are extremely grateful to our partners at PXG for their unwavering commitment to supporting those in need.”

Over the years, Team Rubicon has supported the communities of Hawaii with fire mitigation projects and operations on several of the islands. In May, volunteers conducted a wildfire mitigation operation in Honolulu at the request of Hawaii Firewise. Team Rubicon last supported the island of Maui with a storm response in December 2021.

This isn’t the first time that PXG has supported Team Rubicon. Following Hurricane Harvey in 2017, PXG’s commitment of one million dollars helped fuel Team Rubicon’s immediate response. The donation also helped kick-off a pilot “Rebuild” program committed to rebuilding 100 homes in the Houston area. Similarly, PXG’s million-dollar donation for Hurricane Irma relief funded much of the response.

A committed partner, PXG also supported Hurricane Florence relief efforts and, through an innovative “Essential Face Mask” campaign led by President and Executive Creative Director of PXG Apparel Renee Parsons, helped raise awareness of Team Rubicon’s Neighbors Helping Neighbors COVID-19 initiative.

PXG supported relief efforts in Louisiana in 2020. Within hours of Hurricane Laura making landfall, Team Rubicon was on the ground working to clear roadways to help first responders. In the hours and days following, Team Rubicon deployed more Greyshirts to Louisiana and Texas, ultimately resulting in over 800 volunteer deployments between the two states during their response work. In the wake of the storm PXG Founder and CEO Bob Parsons traveled to Louisiana to see Team Rubicon’s efforts in action and evaluate the devastation in-person. As a result of the visit, PXG and The Bob & Renee Parsons Foundation donated two-million dollars to support the needs of the Louisiana community.

For more information about PXG visit, http://www.PXG.com.

To learn more about Team Rubicon and find out how you can help visit, http://www.TeamRubiconUSA.org.

ABOUT PARSONS XTREME GOLF
Founded by entrepreneur and self-proclaimed golf nut Bob Parsons, PXG embodies his belief that every new product – from golf clubs to sport fashion apparel – should be markedly better. Every innovation should noticeably improve your performance. And every moment of impact should elevate your enjoyment.

Today, PXG offers a complete lineup of right- and left-handed golf clubs, including drivers, fairway woods, hybrids, irons, wedges, and putters, as well as high-performance, sport fashion apparel, and accessories.

PXG’s professional staff includes Joel Dahmen, Zach Johnson, Mason Andersen, Paul Barjon, Eric Cole, Kevin Dougherty, Nicolas Echavarria, Clay Feagler, Patrick Fishburn, Michael Gligic, Grant Hirschman, Bo Hoag, Michael Johnson, Jake Knapp, KK Limbhaust, David Lipsky, Luke List, Justin Lower, Ryan McCormick, Henrik Norlander, Augusto Nunez, Garrett Reband, Seth Reeves, Shad Tuten, Dylan Wu, Celine Boutier, Austin Ernst, Mina Harigae, Yu-Sang Hou, Megan Khang, Christina Kim, Gina Kim, Katherine Kirk, Brittany Lang, Gerina Mendoza, Jennifer Song, Linnea Strom, and Ellinor Sudow.

ABOUT TEAM RUBICON
Team Rubicon is a veteran-led humanitarian organization that serves global communities before, during, and after disasters and crises. Founded following the Haiti earthquake in 2010, the organization has grown to more than 160,000 volunteers across the United States and has launched over 1,100 operations domestically and internationally. To drive equity across disaster and humanitarian services, Team Rubicon focuses on three areas of impact: disaster services- from mitigation to immediate response to recovery; rebuild services — maintaining the fabric of communities through resilient building methods; and international services- providing emergent and surge medical services, WASH, and disaster risk reduction. The organization is featured in the Roku original series titled Team Rubicon, which highlights the work of Greyshirt volunteers assisting communities across the country. Visit http://www.teamrubiconusa.org for more information.

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Leela Brennan, PXG – Parsons Xtreme Golf, 4803875591, [email protected]

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Why do older Mexican American adults in South Texas experience a higher rate of dementia than older non-Hispanic white adults? The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio received a $15.5 million grant from the National Institute on Aging to find answers. The San Antonio Heart and Mind Study is an extension of previous groundbreaking research conducted by the health science center.

SAN ANTONIO, Texas, Aug. 2, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio has received a five-year, $15.5 million grant to conduct the San Antonio Heart and Mind Study, an investigation of why the region’s older Mexican Americans experience a higher rate of dementia than older non-Hispanic white adults. The National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Aging awarded the funding.

Claudia L. Satizabal, PhD, associate professor of population health sciences in the health science center’s Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine, is the study principal investigator. She will conduct the study with colleagues of UT Health San Antonio’s Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases.

The new research is an extension of the San Antonio Heart Study conducted at UT Health San Antonio between 1979 and 2006. Helen P. Hazuda, PhD, professor of medicine, was a study leader during its run and provided access to the cohort and data collected in the initial study to carry out the new iteration.

“The original study enrolled participants ages 25 to 64,” Satizabal said. “The participants returned for follow-up visits, which means we have information about them from their midlife. This is precious, unique data that is hardly ever available, and it now enables us to employ a life-course approach to dementia because we have this information.”

Goal is to reconnect with surviving study participants

People on the younger end of the cohort are now in their 60s. Of the 5,158 participants who were included in the San Antonio Heart Study, about 3,000 are still alive according to a search of death records.

“We will seek to enroll as many of the surviving participants as we can in the San Antonio Heart and Mind Study,” Satizabal said. Only people who were in the original study are eligible. About 65% of the survivors are Mexican American.

Information about deceased participants will be gleaned from electronic medical records and the National Death Index. “We will look for cause of death, any potential diagnosis that was registered and whether they were part of Medicare. We will use as much information as we can to answer questions about who ultimately develops dementia,” Satizabal said.

Older Hispanics at increased risk

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and AD-related dementias (AD/ADRD) disproportionately affect minoritized populations, according to the study summary. Compared to non-Hispanic whites, older Hispanic adults in the United States are estimated to have a 50% increased risk of AD and are projected to bear the largest relative increase in AD/ADRD cases by 2060.

Mexican Americans not only represent the largest segment of Hispanics in the United States, but they also experience a high burden of cardiometabolic diseases, which has the potential to increase AD/ADRD disparities over the next decades, the summary states.

New assessments

The San Antonio Heart Study focused on diabetes and heart disease and didn’t include brain imaging. The new study will utilize MRI and positron emission tomography (PET) to learn how much amyloid and tau, the two main proteins related to Alzheimer’s disease, is in the brains of San Antonio Heart and Mind Study participants.

“And we will do other assessments that were not done in the other studies, such as a comprehensive neuropsychological battery and studies of blood markers and cerebrospinal fluid markers indicating disease,” Satizabal said.

Filling the gap: Understanding how AD affects Mexican Americans

Sudha Seshadri, MD, professor of neurology at UT Health San Antonio and founding director of the Biggs Institute, is a senior investigator with the famed Framingham Heart Study that is an observational study of multiple generations of family members in the town of Framingham outside Boston. The study began in 1948.

Because the Framingham research is primarily in people of European ancestry, it is not the best sample in which to explore racial ethnic influences on disease such as dementia. Studies in other populations, including Mexican Americans, are needed.

“We believe the San Antonio Heart and Mind Study will fill that gap,” Seshadri said. “Studies like this are vital to understand what is unique about Hispanic populations and their risk, both in terms of genetic and environmental factors.

“And finding answers that help Hispanics is not just helpful to Hispanics,” she said. “It’s helpful to everyone in the community. Typically, it is by studying populations that haven’t yet been studied that we find answers.”

Sifting a mosaic of information

The San Antonio Heart Study captured diversity in several ways. Participants lived in different geographical areas of San Antonio, for example.

“We wanted to capture the full diversity of our population, and we didn’t want to only compare Mexican Americans to non-Hispanic whites,” Hazuda said. “Within our Mexican American study population, we wanted to compare those who lived in different neighborhoods and had varying levels of socioeconomic status.”

Satizabal added: “The Mexican American culture is unique. For example, in the barrio we know that they have big families, and maybe that supportive social network helps brain aging. Those questions are not well explored. That’s why this study is exciting.”

Other studies being done in cities such as San Diego and Miami are focused on different Hispanic subgroups originating from South America, Cuba and Puerto Rico. But in South Texas, the population is Mexican Americans.

‘An incredible resource’

“The main differential between our study and others like it is that we have midlife information, and that is something not all the other study cohorts have,” Satizabal said.

“The fact that the original study collected information on blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes starting in the late 1970s makes it an incredible research resource,” Seshadri said. “We can reconnect with the participants today and see how the last 20 to 50 years of their lives have impacted their brain structure and function.”

Participants in the original San Antonio Heart Study are encouraged to contact [email protected].

The San Antonio Heart and Mind Study is funded by the National Institute on Aging (grant number 1R01AG082360-01).

The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio), a primary driver for San Antonio’s $44.1 billion health care and biosciences sector, is the largest academic research institution in South Texas with an annual research portfolio of more than $360 million. Driving substantial economic impact with its six professional schools, a diverse workforce of 7,900, an annual operating budget of $1.23 billion and clinical practices that provide 2.6 million patient visits each year, UT Health San Antonio plans to add more than 1,500 higher-wage jobs over the next five years to serve San Antonio, Bexar County and South Texas. To learn about the many ways “We make lives better®,” visit UTHealthSA.org.

The Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases is dedicated to providing comprehensive dementia care while advancing treatment through clinical trials and research. The Biggs Institute is a National Institute on Aging (NIA)-designated Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC). In addition to patient care and research, the Biggs Institute partners with the School of Nursing at UT Health San Antonio to offer the Caring for the Caregiver program.

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Will Sansom, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, 210-567-2579, [email protected]

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