LCHE produces its own weekly radio show, Today's Health Topics, hosted by Ms. Alma Stewart-Allen. The show features various interrelated health topics relevant to Louisiana.
LCHE's initiatives have also been covered by regional and local news outlets like BR Proud and the Louisiana Illuminator. Notable articles include the following:
#LA40by2030 Campaign
The 2020 America’s Health Rankings ranks Louisiana 50th in the United States. In response, LCHE has developed the LA40by2030 campaign to improve health outcomes and quality of life for children and families across the state. The goal of the campaign is to improve the state’s national ranking to 40th by the year 2030. LCHE recognizes that improving Louisiana’s health ranking by 2030 will require the participation of government officials, public healthcare professionals, and the general public. LCHE is inviting stakeholders to develop a health equity database and action platform and contribute to achieving #LA40by2030.
Annual Health Summit
LCHE leads an annual health summit with the goal of improving health in Louisiana through the lens of health equity and determinants of health. The summit is designed to engage a diverse array of stakeholders in better understanding rapdily changing conditions of health with the goal of informing policy and building partnerships for community health improvements. This goal of the summit is to inspire action on the state, regional and local levels, and to facilitate progress towards LA40by2030.
The 2023 health summit will focus on population heath, and women and children's health. The summit is also aligned with the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) state health improvement priorities: behavioral health, chronic disease, community safety, and maternal and child health.
Louisiana Resources and Educational Assessments for Children’s Health (LA REACH)
LA REACH is a pilot program to develop a holistic approach to improving school environments for teachers and students by decreasing instances of student disciplinary actions, violence, alternative school placement, increasing graduation rates, grade point averages, and standardized test scores. The program goals are to address the lack of awareness and resources for mental health, provide trauma-informed training to school personnel, and build stronger home and school relationships. The program strategy is to provide a safe and conducive environment for learning.
Office of Women's Health and Community Health (OHWHCH)
In 2022, LCHE’s organization and activism led to the creation of the first Louisiana office focused on women’s health. The Office of Women’s Health and Community Health (OWHCH) was established under a bill passed by the Louisiana Legislature on June 18, 2022. The office exists to improve women’s health outcomes and act as a coordinating agency and resources center for women’s health data and strategies.
The Wade Institute for Youth Equity
The Wade Institute for Youth Equity is a year-round program dedicated to pursuing youth equity in key quality indicators, and promoting community safety in communities across Louisiana. For more than a decade, the Louisiana Center for Health Equity has devised and implemented a holistic public health approach to adolescent health. This includes, but is not limited to, youth violence prevention, positive youth development, healthy living including sexual risk avoidance, and mental health wellness. The Institute aims to create a well-rounded and equipped student for positive decision making.
LCHE is dedicated to advancing health equity to improve the overall health and well-being of all Louisianans. Since its founding in 2010, LCHE has worked to eliminate health and healthcare disparities attributed to structural, institutional, or social disadvantages. LCHE educates, advises, and mobilizes in an effort to advance health equity by dismantling health disparities caused by poverty, lack of access to quality healthcare, and unhealthy environmental conditions. In recent years, LCHE’s agenda has centered around supporting the behavioral health needs of youth exposed to trauma and childhood adversity.
LCHE also provides opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to participate in experiential learning opportunties through internships and fellowships. Click here to learn more.
LCHE often collaborates with the following organizations: Louisiana Department of Health, Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Southern University Law Center, Dillard University, and Louisiana State University (LSU), as well as national, state, and community-based organizations, such as the National Collaborative on Health Equity, League of Women Voters, March of Dimes), American Association of University Women (AAUW), National Congress of Black Women, among others. Interdisciplinary collaboration is talked about as an integral component of health equity advocacy. In her Career Pathways interview, founder and director Alma Stewart-Allen has highlighted the importance of bridging gaps between policy, medicine, social science, social services, business, and law.
LCHE also often works closely with high school and university students, including but not limited to the Louisiana Youth Advisory Council (LYAC). Youth play an integral role in LCHE’s research and advocacy initiatives, through which they acquire the leadership, research and advocacy skills necessary for advancing environmental justice and health equity (see LCHE programs).
LCHE acts on behalf of Louisianans who are most impacted by structural inequities. In 2020, ProPublica published an article highlighting the disparities in Covid-related deaths between Black and white patients treated by Oschner Health, the largest nonprofit, academic health system in Louisiana. The journal’s analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the local coroner’s office, found that patients that were Black were more likely to be sent home, and therefore also more likely to die at home. Families reported that Oschner staff pressured them into accepting hospice care. In response, the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus also called for an investigation of Oschner’s practices. However, the Louisiana Health Department responded by declaring that the complaint was outside their purview. Following this development and seeking more impactful systems-change, LCHE filed a civil rights complaint against Oschner with the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil rights. Results of the civil rights investigation are still pending.
LCHE is led by founder and director Ms. Alma Stewart Allen, a registered nurse, former career state civil servant, entrepreneur, and public health policy advocate. For decades, she has testified at legislative hearings, run advocacy campaigns, and emphasized the significance of social and political determinants of health. She led an advocacy campaign to improve access to healthcare coverage, which resulted in Louisiana becoming the first state in the deep south to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act in January 2016. Aiming to improve the state’s health rankings to 40th in the nation by the year 2030 (Louisiana currently ranks 46th), Ms. Stewart Allen continues her advocacy work by developing programs and initiatives aimed at improving health in Louisiana, particularly children’s mental health.
Industrial meatpacking plants in countries all over the world (USA, Germany, Australia) have all become hotspots of COVID-19 (Link).
The close proximity in which workers working in such plants, the gruelling hours, the lack of access to healthcare among workers (many of whom are immigrants, refugees and POCs), are all reasons why such plants have emerged as hotspots. This Propublica article talks about the amont of preparation that such an industry has for pandemic flu outbreaks that could wipe out animals, but failed to do the same for their workers (Link). Moreover, our desire of meat (bad for the environment and unsustainable), has resulted in these companies having a tremendous amount of clout which allowed some to go over the heads of local officials as the ProPublica article reports.
A well publicised Harvard study reported an association between long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and COVID-19 deaths (Link). Another recent study that consider multiple pollutants found a signficiant association between nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a traffic-related pollutant and COVID-19 deaths, and not PM2.5 (Link).
Air pollution and COVID-19 have intersected in other ways. The decreases in air pollution due to the lockdown were seen as one of the few silver linings of the crisis (Link). Although early optimism has been dashed as air pollution levels have jumped right back up in China (Link) and other places when the lockdown was lifted. Some may say that under the cover of COVID-19, the Trump administration also rolled back several environmental regulations (Link), and it is unclear yet what the long-term effects of such rollbacks will be.
Air pollution is also a carrier of COVID-19 (Link), and researchers have been investigating the transmission of the virus by simulating mundane activities such as speaking in the elevator and even flushing a toilet.
Some of the other ways however, in which air pollution and COVID-19 will intersect are at infrastructure such as warehouses, which we will see increase as more and more people move to shopping online. Already in the recent pasts of the building of massive warehouses have been challenged for environmental justice reasons, as they tend to be built in poor, minority communities and result in heavy freight traffic, which in turn burdens such communities with increased pollution (Link1, Link2). Amazon employees themselves have documented the nature of siting of warehouses (Link), and it is likely to become an even more fraught site of contention as we move forward.
This study utilized a random sample of rape victim advocates to determine whether the current community systems and services work for these victims. As is mentioned in the introduction, the services for rape victims are typically separated in terms of legal, medical, mental health; studies tend to focus on these entities individually when evaluating their procedures, thus greatly narrowing the scope of the procedure. This study, therefore, aims to create a comprehensive view of the system as a whole and whether services provided to victims work in this larger context.
The study does utilize a fairly new perspective to gather information. This study as a whole appears to work both as a review article and present information gathered through the subjects interviewed. The first portion of the article presents the various factors being considered in the provided services (for example, why some rape cases are thrown out at a community level, and what characteristics of sexual assault influence social system response). The second portion utilizes interviews with a national, random sample of victim advocates. The selection process ended with 177 eligible agencies for questioning, and 168 participated in the interview process. As mentioned in the introduction of the report and in a previous answer, this large scale study is contrary to usual methodologies. Victim services are typically examined within a small context (i.e. how many alleged rape cases brought to a detective are pursued or how many alleged rape victims who present for counseling receive this help and what is their progress). This study took all of the levels of service (legal, medical, and mental health) and viewed their effectiveness as a network.
This study was published in 1998 in the American Journal of Community Psychology. It is a bimonthly, peer-reviewed academic journal focusing on research devoted to community psychology. Community psychology attempts to place an individual's context within communities/community structure and in society. This includes quality of life for certain individuals, populations, and communities. The impact factor is only about 2, indicating that the journal is infrequently cited and does not have the prowess of larger journal publications.