IdentifyingOurCommunity’sGreatestNeeds

Our 2021 Ochsner Medical Center - Baton Rouge Community Health Needs Assessment allowed us to determine which significant health needs should be prioritized in our region’s Community Health Improvement Planning process.

What We’re Doing

Ochsner Health helps this region’s underserved and vulnerable populations by offering mobile health screenings — for high blood pressure and some types of cancer — as well as COVID vaccinations and health education, regularly working with external partners to bring as many resources to the community as possible.

When it comes to education, our main goal is to deliver healthcare-focused STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education opportunities to K-12 students across East Baton Rouge Parish. We host an annual STEM Pathfinders summer program that gives students a weeklong immersive healthcare experience where they learn about the roles and responsibilities involved in running a hospital. Additionally, the Baton Rouge Ochsner Discovery School will open in fall 2023, initially serving students in pre-K through fourth grade.

We are a partner in the mayor’s Healthy City Initiative (HealthyBR) and participate in their Community Health Needs Assessment. We work with national, regional and local organizations that support our vision, mission and values to develop innovative new initiatives for the greater good of the community, and our volunteerism efforts are focused on collaborating with external partners to create volunteer opportunities for our employees to give back to the communities.

We have partnerships with various higher education institutions to help train our future workforce. We are especially proud of our Jag Mobile program with Southern University’s School of Nursing, a state-of-the-art custom mobile health unit that provides services to medically underserved communities within a 50-mile radius of Southern University’s Baton Rouge campus.