Patients & Policy Get to Know the Texas Nurse Practitioner of the Year A

nother warm day in El Paso, and it’s barely midmorning at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso campus. Graduation is a few weeks in the rearview, but faculty and students alike continue to look ahead toward the next course, the next clinical, the next life to be saved. Most don’t notice me, even though I’m the only person not dressed in scrubs or a white coat. Medical terms flow from their mouths like poetry in a foreign tongue that I can’t understand but know is beautiful.

I take in a few of the many Tom Lea paintings on campus and am then greeted by a warm smile belonging to a person also not in medical apparel, but rather a chic red shift dress and black cowgirl boots.

“Hi,” she says, “I’m Christy.”

| By: ERIN COULEHAN photography courtesy of: TTUHSC-EP |

Christy Blanco D.N.P., R.N., WHNP-BC, FAANP was named 2022 Texas Nurse Practitioner of the Year by Texas Nurse Practitioners, and continues to advocate for the health of her patients and policy changes for nurse practitioners to practice.

Nurse Practitioners are R.N.s who have completed a master’s or doctoral degree in nursing and have advanced clinical training.

Dr. Blanco is an associate professor at the TTUHSC-EP’s Hunt School of Nursing and former president of the Texas Nurse Practitioners Board of Director, who has been advocating for accessible, quality health care by nurse practitioners for more than a decade. She’s been unafraid to take the lead to empower the nurse practitioner community by working to find solutions to healthcare access through engagement with legislative leaders in both houses of the Texas Legislature, as well as by serving as a panelist in health policy proceedings.

“There’s something about advocacy that I just love and that’s what I love: advocating for patients,” says Dr. Blanco. “I tell my students all the time that my whole purpose is making sure that they’re fully-educated and to understand the needs of this community. I love being a nurse practitioner. I truly want our students to know,understand, and believe that they can be a nurse practitioner.”

Dr. Blanco says that nurse practitioners can help address the need for improved health care access by providing primary care services, especially in rural areas. Nurse practitioners are 1.5 times more likely than physicians to work in rural areas. In Texas, 243 of 254 counties are federally-designated Health Provider Shortage Areas, with 690 nurse practitioners in El Paso County.

“Health care doesn’t just start with the patient. There is a lot to consider, and one of those considerations is access to care,” says Dr. Blanco. “I’m doing what I can to advance nurse practitioners and break those barriers that keep health care from rural areas around us.”

In addition to teaching and policy work, Dr. Blanco also specializes in women’s health and sees patients during the week.

Her career started as a R.N in the Labor and Delivery department, then her love of learning took her to new heights when she noticed something as the fifth-year medical students were quizzed by attending physicians.

“I knew all the answers to the questions they’re being asked,” she said. “I knew the answers to the questions being asked because I was constantly studying and looking things up. I said ‘You know what? I can be a nurse practitioner, I can do this.’”

Dr. Blanco says she had an interest in women’s health and knew she wanted to make an impact on chronic conditions. Today, she sees many patients who have obesity or are going through menopause (and sometimes both).

“Obesity really affects a lot of women and they don’t realize that, especially during the perimenopausal and the menopausal years. There are so many hormonal imbalances that we’re not getting educated on.”

Dr. Blanco’s passion for continuing education is benefiting women in El Paso by dispelling misconceptions about women’s health and bodies.

“Women have been suffering needlessly due to inaccurate information. Women have absolutely been in the situation where their symptoms are just blown off. The word for ‘uterus’ is actually ‘hysteria,’” she says.

Her commitment to education and advocacy is being passed on to students at the Hunt School of Nursing, who she empowers with the knowledge to make meaningful changes in their communities with the bravery to do so.

“Health policy is across the board in nursing,” she says. “We haven’t been at the table for long, but by mentoring students the way I have been mentored we’re changing that. It’s important I acknowledge the only reason I got where I am is because of people who have poured their life into me and mentored me.” s a teen girl with a toxic relationship with food, I find myself surprisingly unaffected by the low body fat and pristinely toned bodies on social media.

That isn’t me saying I don’t see why it’s triggering, of course.

“Doomscrolling” through girl after girl with a thin waist, or glass skin. And how come everyone but me seems to have a perfectly flat stomach, unaffected by bloating or the like? The echo chamber of nothing but the most flawless aspects of someone, combined with heavy face filters, is a breeding ground for body dysmorphia.

Along with this, the pandemic has been associated with worsening eating disorders. More teenagers have been diagnosed with eating disorders, and those who had one before the lockdown felt their eating disorders had gotten hard to control.

“Eating disorders are made up of several very distinct categoriesbut all are serious and need treatment. It is not a simple suggestion to someone struggling to simply ‘just eat’ or ‘stop vomiting’ or ‘don’t exercise so much’. These are compulsive behaviors and are not simple to stop but they are treatable,” says Dr. Elizabeth L. Richeson, Ph.D., M.S. PsyPharm. “Furthermore, if a person has had these behaviors for a while, it becomes even more of a challenge to stop. It is important to realize that eating disorders, left untreated, can become very serious and even life-threatening. Almost all individuals with an eating disorder are depressed, anxious and struggle with obsessive-compulsive disorders,” she continues.

A 2022 study published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics reports that the frequency of eating disorder inpatient admissions doubled from the Spring of 2020 to the Spring of 2021. The study also reports the rate of young adult and adolescent inpatient admissions for eating disorders increased to 7.2 percent a month, whereas the pre-pandemic rate was 0.7 percent.

“We were able to show that at multiple sites throughout the country, there were significant increases in patients with eating disorders after the start of the pandemic -- that this wasn’t just a phenomenon in one place,” said Dr. Sydney HartmanMunick, the study’s lead author. “The results are in line with what we were all feeling working day-to-day in our clinics and in the hospital.” www.thecitymagazineelp.com

While we may all be tired of hearing about the negative impacts of social media and post-COVID effects, eating disorders are a subject that cannot be ignored. From binge-eating disorder to anorexia nervosa, eating disorders are the mental illnesses with the highest mortality rates, caused as a direct effect of the eating habits caused by the disorder.

“Eating disorders have been – and continue to be – a significant public health concern for adolescents and young adults,” said Hartman-Munick.

Leaving one pandemic to re-enter the mental health pandemic is dangerous for our teens, especially when we’ve never gotten the conversation around eating disorders right. Instead, we walk around the same story every time, neglecting the other perspectives and experiences that need to be shared just as much.

It’s why I doubted my eating issues for so long: I had never seen an eating disorder story like mine, so I refused help.

As a young girl on the internet, social media had nothing to do with my developing food issues.

Instead, I developed an eating disorder because I felt like I lacked a sense of control in my life, and controlling my eating was the only way to regain it. In being meticulous about the calories I consumed, I had a hold on my life that no one else could take from me.

It wasn’t a conscious thought right away.

Fortunately, 11-year-old me didn’t wake up and realize I wanted complete control over my body fat percentage and diet. No one wakes up the perfect anorexic, and I was no exception to the rule. Everything happened slowly, then all at once. No single drop thinks it causes a flood, but floodwaters rise regardless.

I trickled one drop at a time.

I started skipping lunch out of annoyance; something about how I was not too fond of the lunch I had to eat, and I desperately needed to rebel against something. From this, it was tossing any dinner I didn’t like.

As time moved on, though, my symptoms got worse. A harmless fit thrown by a 5th grader became a high schooler’s sole obsession.

I refused to eat all my meals. I woke up too late for breakfast, skipped lunch, filled myself with water, and threw out every dinner I ate at home.

I felt panicked when this routine was broken, like a lifeline had been taken from me. Without my habits, I felt lost. I couldn’t start healing because I didn’t know who I was without my eating routine, and had no identity besides a faux sense of control.

I believed that any weight I was losing was proof of my self-control. Any thin person I saw was someone to look up to, someone who seemed to be in complete control. Everything else could fall apart around me, but this? This was my sanctuary.

There isn’t anything “in control” about disordered eating habits.

As I spiraled, I lost control of who I was without my eating patterns, and forgot how to cope without them. All the girls I saw around me, who looked thin and in complete control, weren’t pillars of self-control; they were just girls.

That’s what eating disorders do: They twist your perception of other people, of your own thoughts. Then, at your most vulnerable, they cling to you like a leech and don’t release you until you’ve been sucked empty.

Despite this, we treat eating disorders awfully both online and offline, which is strange in the “accept mental health” world we seem to live in now.

Those who struggle with eating disorders are treated with no empathy; their disorder treated as something they should solve already. When someone is not ready to recover or relapses into old habits, the nearly unanimous response is annoyance, as if they’ve somehow failed.

Everything together paints a bad look for the future of eating disorder awareness. From a lack of perspective to a lack of empathy, how are we supposed to help those around us heal when the discussion is in this state? How are those with eating disorders supposed to seek help when this is how we treat them?

Dr. Richeson says it’s important for people to educate themselves in order to best support someone with an eating disorder.

“Keep in mind that in the course of recovery, someone with an eating disorder may shift their behaviors to another eating disorder,” she says. “Family and friends need to understand how their words can be scary or hurtful, and even make the ED worse. Commenting on how a person looks or eats can be triggering -- even what you may consider a positive comment -- so it is better to not make those comments at all.”

I have some hope, though, because I’m healing now.

Ironically, I’ve taken back control of my old habits. I no longer lean on my poor eating patterns to cope. Although it’s been difficult, the people around me have understood (although the frustration when I relapse is still present).

I still worry about others with eating disorders, those without a support group, or with unique stories and perspectives they haven’t seen elsewhere. If they only see one repeated dialogue about eating disorders, how do they know their issues are concerning? If we only focus on the mirror monster, does the control monster disappear too?

Or, does it linger in the shadows, waiting to strike?