Wanda Helgesen is the Executive Director of BorderRAC, a Regional Advisory Council that brings together pre-hospital and hospital partners to discuss emergency healthcare and disaster preparedness  issues in Far West Texas & Southern New Mexico.

Wanda earned her Master’s in Nursing from the University of Texas at El Paso.  She practiced clinically and administratively in critical care and emergency departments.   Her administrative duties led to her involvement in hospital emergency planning as well as regional disaster planning.  For the past many years, her focus has been on the development of regional emergency healthcare systems-of-care and the development of regional emergency preparedness plans to include the full continuum of healthcare from EMS to home health.    Wanda serves on the Texas Governor’s EMS & Trauma Advisory Council: Disaster and Emergency Preparedness Committee and is the Board Chair of the Texas EMS, Trauma and Acute Care Foundation.

She led BorderRAC’s response during the COVID crisis to include distribution of personal protective equipment, operation the original COVID test site in El Paso, provided staffing augmentation to hospitals and long term care providers, managed the deployment of a mobile medical unit to UMC, coordinated the transfer out and repatriation of over 200 El Pasoans when there were not enough local hospital beds, coordinated the development of the alternate care site at the El Paso Convention Center, coordinated the original monoclonal antibody infusion site, and participated in the management of the deceased during the COVIDs darkest time.

She has presented at numerous conferences and has served as a guest scholar at the University of Texas at El Paso School of Public Health and the College of Nursing and Texas Tech El Paso - Paul L Foster School of Medicine.