HJBR Mar/Apr 2020

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE I  MAR / APR 2020 29 Alex Billioux, MD Assistant Secretary Office of Public Health housing, transportation, primary care, and are taking their prescription drugs regularly. This year, you can expect us to renew our policy focus on maternal mortality. Our Lou- isiana Perinatal Quality Collaborative focus- es on reducing the number of women who die or are seriously injured during or after childbirth. We have set an ambitious goal to reduce maternal morbidity by 20 percent by Mother’s Day 2020, and have already seen a 32 percent drop in the severe health con- sequences of hemorrhage in moms giving birth. You can expect to hear more about what we are doing during the upcoming leg- islative session. We are also happy to report some early success with a new pilot program based in St. Landry Parish, called Community Health- Ways. In this innovative program, commu- nity health workers have been connecting residents to social services, and educational and employment opportunities, in an effort to improve health. The program launched in May 2019 out of the St. Landry Parish Health Unit, where three community health workers were hired to help address social needs for clients. A guiding principle of the program is the premise that evaluating and addressing social determi- nants of health can help prevent future health problems and cut down on emergency de- partment visits and hospitalizations. To do that work, we are assessing the so- cial needs of all clients who come to us for services at the health unit. The community health workers are using their broad knowl- edge of the community, and the services available to help connect clients to solutions, and help them find ways to improve their well-being. The questions in the screening tool, based on a model first developed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), are aimed at gathering information about basic needs such as housing and food access, em- ployment, utilities, education, mental health history, interpersonal violence, and access to transportation. Once the social risk factors are identified, community health workers be- gin the process of connecting the client with services and setting goals. Community health workers screened 1,667 clients between May and December, enrolled more than 600 people, and assisted 55 peo- ple in finding employment through the pro- gram. Food insecurity was the leading issue among program participants, followed by unemployment, and struggling to pay for utilities. While we have many health care chal- lenges in Louisiana, we are seeing the return on our investments in healthcare with real improvements in the health of our citizens. We are optimistic about the future, but we did not get here without hard work, and this improvement will not continue without even more effort and focus on our ultimate goal: improving the health of all Louisianans every- where. n Dr. Alex Billioux is assistant secretary for the Louisiana Department of Health’s Office of Public Health. He is a primary care internist focused on im- proving individual and community health through innovative public health approaches, including cross-sector population health strategies, private sector engagement, and sharing data to foster co- ordinated, learning health systems. Dr. Billioux has led the development and implementation of Louisi- ana’s Hepatitis C Elimination Program, and oversees the state’s first-in-the-nation modified subscription model for hepatitis C treatment. The Office of Public Health is responsible for pro- tecting and promoting the health and wellness of all individuals and communities in Louisiana through promotion of healthy lifestyles; prevention of dis- ease and injury; safeguarding water, food, and the environment; leading the state’s health data strate- gy; and ensuring readiness for hurricanes, disasters and other threats to Louisiana in conjunction with other state departments. Previously, Dr. Billioux served as senior advisor to the director of the CMS Innovation Center and director of the Division of Population Health In- centives and Infrastructure in the Preventive and Population Health Group. He was a 2015-2016 White House Fellow, serving at the Department of Health and Human Services under Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell. He holds a part-time appoint- ment in the department of medicine at Louisiana State University at New Orleans, and at Johns Hop- kins Hospital, where he trained and served as assis- tant chief of service of Osler Medical Service. Dr. Bil- lioux’s prior work focused on expanding capacity to address diseases of poverty through health systems improvement, clinician education, and studying re- sponses to HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis in Guatema- la, Haiti, India, South Africa, and Uganda. Dr. Billioux received an MD from Johns Hopkins University and PhD in clinical medicine from the University of Oxford. He holds a BA in liberal arts from the Louisiana Scholars’ College at Northwest- ern State University of Louisiana. “We have made it possible for nearly 12,000 people to apply for Medicaid, ensuring released prisoners will have access to mental health services, medica- tions, and primary care.”