Baton Rouge’s health care corridor already exists along Essen Lane and Bluebonnet Boulevard. And as Business Report details in a feature from its current issue, members of the newly created Baton Rouge Health District hope to leverage what’s there to deliver better care and make the community more livable for patients, providers, researchers and residents.
“If you’re going to a place to be healthy, that place should be healthier than it is,” says Baton Rouge Area Foundation Executive Vice President John Spain.
But what can be done to improve the corridor and really make the health district happen?
Traffic clogs the district’s arteries, so enhancing the street network is an important goal. So far, funding has been secured (mostly through the city-parish Green Light Plan) for a Dijon Drive extension connecting the two major surface streets.
Planners hope to create a district where workers need to park just once a day. Bikeshare and carshare programs, district shuttles, and even an urban gondola could help people get around, and proposed street design guidelines could make the district more bike- and pedestrian-friendly.
Feasibility studies also are being conducted for two major possible initiatives. The first, a Diabetes and Obesity Center focused on primary and preventive care, likely would be housed at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, which already performs world-class chronic disease research.
The second, a proposed four-year LSU medical school, could be controversial. Virtually all of the best-known medical districts around the country have a significant academic component. But the state has trouble paying for existing colleges and universities, and Louisiana already ranks a healthy 10th among states in the number of students enrolled in medical school per 100,000 population.
A new branch of the LSU medical school paired with additional residency opportunities could lead to more doctors choosing to practice in Baton Rouge.
“We are careful in saying that this is a branch of the New Orleans medical school,” Spain says. “We don’t want to get into a political fight.”
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