Losing children is a tragedy to any parent. Amber and Miles Garza know this pain; they lost two children — Miles, at 4, and Aiden, at 2 — to a genetic condition called Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome.
Amber Garza said she fought to make sure her children were comfortable, providing them the care, equipment and therapy they needed. Miles needed an expensive medical bed to bring him comfort along with the medical equipment needed to assist him. It helped a lot, Amber said; he could sleep better at night.
Miles died in 2021.
Those are some of the families Jenny Hixon, new president and CEO of Any Baby Can of San Antonio, assists through the nonprofit organization.
ABC helps families with children with special needs at no cost, regardless of income, and one of their assisting services is guiding parents through loss. They would come through for the Garzas.
Finding themselves left behind with medical equipment after losing their son, the Garzas wanted to donate the bed that once comforted him.
“I received a letter in the mail, and it was from ABC,” Amber Garza said. “(It) brought me to tears because it was a letter explaining to me, updating me about the family that received the bed. I thought it was so thoughtful of them to do that. I mean, it was wonderful how they explained how the child wasn’t sleeping well before, and now, they were getting the best sleep at night.
“It made me feel so happy to hear that,” she said. On March 8, Any Baby Can hosted its annual Memorial and Butterfly Release. The Garzas volunteered, putting together the arts and craft table. They also spoke about their experiences.
For Hixon, that kind of support is important, especially for families in need. She began her journey in public health as an undergraduate student at the University of Texas at Austin. She later got a master’s degree in public health from Tulane University of Louisiana.
A San Antonio native, Hixon joined the nonprofit as CEO last summer. She was previously the executive director at the Thrive Youth Center, a nonprofit homeless shelter that serves LGBTQ+ youth, and having a tenure at the Texas Civil Rights Project and the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District.
Any Baby Can serves Bexar County and 16 surrounding counties, including Atascosa, Bandera, Blanco, Comal, Edwards, Frio, Gillespie, Gonzales, Guadalupe, Kimble, Kerr, Real, Uvalde, Kendall, Medina and Wilson counties.
The nonprofit is hosting its big fundraiser, the 21st annual Walk for Autism, from 8 a.m.-11 a.m. April 26 at Palo Alto College.
The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Q: How did you get into this line of work?
A: I got into the public health field when I was in undergrad at UT. I was a sexual health peer advisor. I went out and did workshops for people. I also volunteered on some hotlines … for pregnant teens, and I also volunteered for a hotline for people who experienced sexual assault. From that, I kind of realized that the work I wanted to do was really around that intersection.
Public health is really a fantastic field in that it looks at things from a systematic viewpoint that what we’re experiencing as individuals is the result of the collective choices that we’ve made as a society around the distribution of resources. Not just money, but safe places, where people live, food, access to jobs, education. Those are really the things that influence our health and well-being.
Q: Given the current political environment, has fundraising and getting grants gotten harder for Any Baby Can?
A: So we’re lucky in that we have not been impacted by any of the funding cuts that have happened. I think what we do know is that the clients that we serve, who are by and large people that are already struggling with basic needs — any chance in the available resources is going to fall harder on our clients.
Q: And that’s where the kind of work that your organization does comes in — everything you do is free for your clients?
A: Yes, we do not have any charges for any of our services. We also have no limits on income or residency or disease or diagnosis, which I think is really important because for some of our families, their child is experiencing a challenge, but they might not even have the resources to get that child diagnosed.
So a lot of what our case managers do is get parents connected with the right resources so that they can get that diagnosis, get that medical home established, and get their child into the right service.
Q: What attracted you to Any Baby Can?
A: I love the space of kids and families. I think that’s been kind of throughout all my work, really that intergenerational work of supporting parents to be the best parents that they can be for their kids — is something I’ve been very passionate about.
For Any Baby Can, this is a 40-year-old organization that has done life-changing work in San Antonio. I really love the mission of a holistic approach to child and family well-being. Our case management program, in particular, looks at the whole family and meets all of those needs.
Our bereavement program also intersects with previous work that I’ve done when I ran the violence prevention program at Metro Health because we reported the child fatality review. I think that knowing that that grief and loss, how that changes a family’s long-term trajectory — I think that the work our bereavement program is doing is fantastic.
There’s a lot of parts of the mission that I think is really good work.
