News Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

JANUARY 6, 2006

LSUHSC SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH INCORPORATES KATRINA INTO CURRICULUM IN RETURN TO NEW ORLEANS

New Orleans–Teaching the lessons of Katrina, LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans’ School of Public Health has come home, albeit to borrowed space. Classes will return to the city on January 9, 2006, beginning at 8:00 a.m. and scheduled throughout the day, at the Advanced Technology Center in the UNO Research and Technology Park on the lakefront even as the last pieces of technical support equipment are installed. Classes will be held there until the UNO Tech Building on Canal Street, where the school had been housed, is ready for re-occupancy sometime this spring. But some of the course work has already been back for several months.

“We had an unparalleled opportunity to make history while we lived it after Hurricane Katrina and the flooding caused by failed levees,” noted Dr. Larry Hollier, Chancellor of LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans. “In addition to faculty on the ground who never left, our Public Health students are also helping to rebuild New Orleans.”

“We incorporated the public health issues generated by the flooding and its aftermath and the displacement of our population into our curriculum,” said Dr. Elizabeth Fontham, Dean of the LSUHSC School of Public Health. “Not only are we using this unique teaching experience, we are helping to meet critical needs that will shape the short and long term health of New Orleans and Southeast Louisiana.”

For the Practice Experience course, which is required for Masters students in both the fall and spring semesters, LSUHSC public health students participated in census surveys, and needs and health assessments related to the displaced population. Katrina experience has been incorporated into the graduate course, Emergency Response to Disasters and Terrorism. The Food for Thought seminar series will feature guest speakers who have participated in various aspects of recovery throughout the spring semester.

Because of its heavily damaged campus, the School of Public Health, along with the other five health professions schools of LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, temporarily relocated to Baton Rouge. Enormous challenges were overcome to resume classes four short weeks after the evacuation, keeping the educational commitment to LSUHSC students and assuring Louisiana’s continued health workforce.

Louisiana’s only public School of Public Health, the former Department of Public Health in LSUHSC’s School of Medicine was recognized as a school in 2003 to improve the health and well-being of the people of Louisiana through education, research and community involvement. The Master of Public Health degree program offers five core concentrations–Biostatistics, Epidemiology, Environmental/Occupational Health, Behavioral/Community Health Sciences, and Health Policy and Systems Management. A Master of Public Health degree in Community/Preventive Medicine for health care professionals is also offered as well as a Master of Science degree in Biometry. Additional concentrations and joint programs are under development, to advance overall health status, diminish health disparities among under-served and rural populations and to pursue research and service activities committed to advancing the human condition throughout the global community. Research and service programs include the HIV/AIDS Program, the Homeland Defense Program, the Juvenile Justice Program, the Louisiana Rural Health Access Program, the Louisiana Tumor Registry, the Epidemiology Research Program, the Telemedicine Program, the Cancer Control Program, the Health Care Effectiveness Program, the Medical Informatics Program, the Louisiana Healthy Aging Center, and the Biostatistics Services Program.

Louisiana’s flagship academic health center, LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans educates nearly three quarters of the state’s health care professionals and research scientists, among its schools of medicine, dentistry, nursing, allied health professions, graduate studies, and public health.

For more information, contact Leslie Capo, (504) 452-9166.