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.
The SVI has been used to assess hazard mitigation plans in the southeastern US, evaluate social vulnerability in connection to obesity, explore the impact of climate change on human health, create case studies for community resilience policy, and even to look beyond disasters in examining a community’s physical fitness.
The SVI was also used by public health researchers to explore the association between vulnerability and covid-19 incidence in Louisiana Census Tracts. Previous research examining associations between the CDC SVI and early covid-19 incidence had mixed results at a county level, but Biggs et al.’s study found that all four CDC SVI sub-themes demonstrated association with covid-19 incidence (in the first six months of the pandemic). Census tracts with higher levels of social vulnerability experienced higher covid-19 incidence rates. Authors of this paper point to the long history of racial residential segregation in the United States as an important factor shaping vulnerability and covid-19 incidence along racialized lines, with primarily Black neighborhoods typically most disadvantaged relative to primarily white neighborhoods. The compounding factors shaping vulnerability along racialized lines—high rates of poverty, low household income, and lower educational attainment—are identified as shaping the likelihood of covid-19 infection. The authors encourage policy initiatives that not only mitigate covid-19 transmission through allocation of additional resources and planning, but that also “address the financial and emotional distress following the covid-19 epidemic among the most socially vulnerable populations” (Biggs et al., 2021).
Biggs, Erin N., Patrick M. Maloney, Ariane L. Rung, Edward S. Peters, and William T. Robinson. 2021. “The Relationship Between Social Vulnerability and COVID-19 Incidence Among Louisiana Census Tracts.” Frontiers in Public Health 8. https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpubh.2020.617976.
Lehnert, Erica Adams, Grete Wilt, Barry Flanagan, and Elaine Hallisey. 2020. “Spatial Exploration of the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index and Heat-Related Health Outcomes in Georgia.” International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 46 (June): 101517. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2020.101517.
The CDC SVI has been acknowledged to be limited in capturing accurate representations of small-area populations that experience rapid change between censuses (e.g. New Orleans in the years following Hurricane Katrina).
The Index is also limited, like other mapping tools, by the lack of homogeneity within any census tract or county/parish. There may very well be more vulnerable communities and individuals living in overall less vulnerable areas. Homeless populations may also specifically not be represented within studies that rely on geocoding by residential address. Length of residence within a geographic area may also impact results.
The index is also limited by calculations that account for where people live, but not necessarily where they work or play. The lives of individuals are not necessarily restricted to the boundaries of a census tract or county/parish.
Lastly, vulnerability is only one component of several components that are important for public health officials and policymakers to consider—the hazard itself, the vulnerability of physical infrastructure, and community assets and resources are other elements that must be taken into account for reducing the effects of a hazard.
This data resource has also been critiqued by Bakkensen et al. for not having been explicitly tested and empirically validated to demonstrate that the index performs well (a problem they identify as characterizing multiple indices).
Bakkensen, Laura A., Cate Fox-Lent, Laura K. Read, and Igor Linkov. 2017. “Validating Resilience and Vulnerability Indices in the Context of Natural Disasters.” Risk Analysis 37 (5): 982–1004. https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.12677.
There is a national data set that ranks all counties or census tracts within the entire data set (useful for a multi-state analysis). The user also has the option to utilize a state data set, which ranks counties or census tracts only within the state selected.
The CDC/ATSDR SVI draws on the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS), 5-year estimates. The most recently available SVI dataset is for 2018, which utilizes the ACS 2014-2018 data.