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San Antonio nonprofit Center for Health Empowerment in South Texas, also known as CHEST, is getting its first headquarters in 2026 with a goal of providing easier access to medical services for residents on San Antonio's Southwest Side.
CHEST was created to bridge gaps in access to healthcare. The center would provide support services, such as transportation arrangements, health navigation agencies, and access to educational programming.
Former District 4 Councilwoman Adriana Rocha Garcia, who represented much of the Southwest Side, is the new president and CEO of CHEST. The building being leased is a former education center in South San ISD with 12 classrooms. The goal is to provide the space to other nonprofits to provide their services.
“We will be able to bring together, essentially convene, a group of nonprofit organizations to do some work that's focused on the non-medical drivers of health in the South Side of San Antonio,” said Rocha Garcia.
The headquarters will be located at 419 Lovett Street behind the recently closed Athens Elementary School in South San. The board of managers for San Antonio ISD approved a lease agreement in November.
During preliminary discussions a month earlier, board members praised the use of the building and potential revenue for the district. The lease is about $2,500 a month for three years with a two-year renewal option.
The building itself was originally an annex of the school but later became the district’s CareZone in 2019. It makes grief counseling, child psychiatry, addiction support and family therapy accessible to the South Side community and eliminates the need for long bus rides to appointments on the other side of town. CareZone is now located next door at Dwight Middle School.
The CareZone name is still visible on one side of the building. CHEST will begin moving in over the coming weeks. Rocha Garcia said the building still needs some work.
“We are right now in the process of cleaning the building a little bit, of course, buffing the floors, cleaning the restrooms, bringing things up to code,” Rocha Garcia said. “It had just been renovated a few years ago, but we want to make sure that everything is ready to go for the partners that we bring in.”
A pre-pandemic study in 2019 showed that residents on the South Side of San Antonio had a 20-year life expectancy gap compared to those on the north side of the city. Much of that disparity can be attributed to the lack of healthcare services and facilities on the South Side.
“If you technically divide south of (Highway) 90, you're going to be waiting for a hospital bed a lot longer than north of 90,” Rocha Garcia said, adding that in some zip codes in this area there are 0.7 hospital beds for every one person.
A map showing hospital locations within the city of San Antonio shows a gap in the Southwest Side and only one hospital on the Southeast Side.
Rocha Garcia said one of the goals is to help create health empowerment zones where people will have better access to the resources they need.
“What do we have? What can we bring together? Bringing ownership. That's why we're empowerment, right? We're trying to make sure that people take care of their own health. We empower them. We bring them the chest, essentially, so that they can come and have access, right? It's data informed,” she said.
CHEST is in conversations with multiple other nonprofits to be housed in the center.
One such organization is Ride Connect, which provides rides for seniors to doctors' appointments, Community First, Fuerza Unida, and United Way to be housed in the center rent-free.
“We'd rather they use the money that they would have allocated for rent in the area into the programs that will be going back to serve our community,” Rocha Garcia said.
A ribbon cutting is expected in February or March.
