HJBR Nov/Dec 2021

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE I  NOV / DEC 2021 47 For weekly eNews updates and to read the journal online, visit HealthcareJournalBR.com Louisiana Healthcare Connections vice president of quality improvement, Yolanda Wilson. “Good health starts in the places where we live, learn, worship, work, and play. And because, at the local level, many of the solutions for good health already exist, investing in those solutions means positively impacting the health and health out- comes of our members and improving the health of our communities.” Louisiana Healthcare Connections’ Community Health Grants program launched in 2018 as part of the health plan’s efforts to combat food inse- curity and hunger in Louisiana. The Healthy Loui- siana Medicaid health plan has also implemented a number of other food insecurity-focused pro- grams, including a physician toolkit to help healthcare professionals identify and address food insecurity at the point of care, and SNAP- match programs at several farmers markets. Louisiana Healthcare Connections Expands Safe Sleep ProgramStatewide Sleep-related incidents are the leading cause of death in babies up to 12 months, and Louisi- ana has the second highest infant mortality rate in the country. To address this health crisis, Louisiana Healthcare Connections implemented a nation- ally recognized safe sleep program to reduce infant sleep-related deaths, in partnership with Cribs for Kids. Launched in 2019, the pilot safe sleep pro- gram focused on North Louisiana, a region with especially high rates of infant mortality. Pregnant members of Louisiana Healthcare Connections living in Shreveport, Monroe and surrounding cit- ies received Safe Sleep Survival Kits containing a portable crib and educational materials teaching sleep safety for infants. As compared with 2018, 2019 saw a reduc- tion in infant mortality of 56% in the pilot pro- gram region. By the end of 2020, the program resulted in 70 fewer infant deaths. Based on these results, Louisiana Healthcare Connections quickly expanded the Cribs for Kids program statewide. Since expanding the safe sleep program in April 2021, Louisiana Healthcare Connections has dis- tributed 3,527 cribs to families across the state. “When I received the crib, I wasn’t even sure who it came from,” said Moneisha Jackson. “When I opened the box, it was from Louisiana Healthcare Connections and it just lit up my day, because you have people out there who care about you and your kid. And they’re actually reaching out.” “Infant mortality was a health disparity we iden- tified, researched and are helping mitigate,” noted Stewart Gordon, MD, chief medical offi- cer for Louisiana Healthcare Connections. “When we saw such strong results in north Louisiana, we expanded the safe sleep program as quickly as we could. Every baby deserves the chance to live their life; these cribs and educational materi- als are giving a lot more infants in Louisiana that chance.” Pennington Biomedical Conducts First Vaccination Trial Pennington Biomedical Research Center is con- ducting its first vaccination trial, evaluating the safety and effectiveness of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for children under 12 in a Phase Three clinical trial. “This is crucial and potentially life-saving research,” said Daniel Hsia, MD, associate pro- fessor, Clinical Trials Unit, and site principal inves- tigator of the study. “In the past two months, we’ve seen a substantial increase in the number of children testing positive for COVID-19. Unlike earlier variants of the virus, the Delta variant is taking a considerable toll on kids, most of whom haven’t been vaccinated.” The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not yet authorized any COVID-19 vaccines for use in children under 12, Hsia said. However, clinical tri- als like this one provide important data on the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine in thou- sands of children. Amy Thomassie, research nurse and lead study coordinator, said part two of the study involves three different age cohorts with 75 % of the chil- dren receiving the vaccine and 25% receiving the placebo. Pennington Biomedical has already filled all of its slots in the 6 to 11-year-old cohort. The next cohort will enroll children from 2 to 5 years of age, and this part of the study is pro- jected to start around the end of September. The last cohort will enroll children from 6 months to less than 2 years of age, and this por- tion of the study is projected to start in October or November. The Food and Drug Administration will review the results of part two as part of the approval pro- cess for the vaccine’s use in children, Hsia said. Pennington Biomedical’s selection as a par- ticipating site in this vaccine trial is an impor- tant milestone for the research center and is an example of how the center can pivot to address the important health problems facing our world today, Executive Director John Kirwan, MD, said. It also marks a new chapter for the Clinical Trials Unit, which helped test many of the prescription medications used to treat diabetes and all of the prescription medications used for weight loss. Kirwan said the evaluation of a safe and effec- tive vaccine for children is urgently needed. “We don’t know what, if any, long-term effects COVID-19 will have on our children’s health,” Kirwan said. “But we do know that vaccines can help decrease your chances of getting and spreading the virus and help prevent serious ill- ness even if you get the virus.” The Moderna COVID-19 vaccine is a messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine. The vaccine doesn’t con- tain the virus. It’s more like a text message that tells your immune system what the virus looks like and how to defend against it. Once the instruc- tions have been delivered, the message deletes itself. Moderna’s KidCOVE study is being conducted in collaboration with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Develop- ment Authority (BARDA), part of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. CIS Celebrates 15 Years in Zachary Cardiovascular Institute of the South (CIS) is cel- ebrating 15 years of providing comprehensive cardiovascular care in Zachary. From the begin- ning, CIS fostered a close partnership with Lane Regional Medical Center (Lane), and together, the two formed a comprehensive cardiovascular