HJNO Jan/Feb 2025

DIALOGUE 12 JAN / FEB 2025 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS initiative called Gulf Coast Surgical Center. Those are medical, but I’m a big com- munity person because it's one thing to live inside your organization, but health- care is not given in an organization — that's a building. I always tell my people, “Bricks and mortar don't make who we are. It's just where we tend to practice.” We're com- munity based. We're in all the school sys- tems — the elementary schools and the high schools. We are advocates and partners for the STEM programs in some of the schools that are elementary. We send our dietary people, and they come here. They're so cute, the little first, second, and third grad- ers come march over here with the chef hats and all of that, and then we teach them about good eating and things that they can cook with their parents. Because if you don't start them then, it's really hard to change a teenager to eat better and make better choices. And we provide the athletic trainers in the high schools. I'll tell you a quick story. I have two sons, but they're older and they played sports. However, recently I went to the store and everybody in the organization outside looking for chocolate milk. I was like, “What's the deal with chocolate milk?” Our dietician goes into the high schools and teaches them how to make better choices. Apparently, it's a great way to rebuild your protein and to quench things if they keep them in chocolate milk. I was like, "What?" We couldn't find chocolate milk anywhere. But you could see our dieticians go to the practices and go and educate. We have a fitness person who goes and does all the fitness — how to do workouts, and how to be safe. And we also have a sports physicians on staff. They're at all the high school games, and when somebody gets hurt, we're available on the sidelines. Then we're able to see them the next day or that Monday to make sure. One of the things I am a big advocate for is concussion testing. I know when my sons were younger and playing football, there were no athletic trainers on the side- lines, just coaches, and they did not have that medical training. Players would get hurt, and they stayed in the game. Now, we all know from the heightened awareness the NFL has created, which says, “Nope, nope, this is not acceptable." That is why we do baseline concussion testing on all student-athletes who play contact sports. Our Foundation for Terrebonne General Health System has also taken a stand. They make it possible for these athletes by pro- viding funding for baseline concussion tests. That way, in the event of an injury, there is a benchmark by which to measure and pro- ceed with treatment from there. Recognizing the importance of this, the coaches and the principals signed an agree- ment that the athletic trainer who we pro- vide at no cost or the highest medical pro- vider on the sideline, which is affiliated with us, makes the call whether the player stays in or out of the game. The coach can- not override it, or we will step back. To me, that protects our children. Now that this is in place, there is much more understanding of the correct concussion protocol. Editor How many concussions do you think that you guys are seeing? Peoples Since 2017, over 10,000 baseline concussion tests have been performed on student-athletes playing contact sports, resulting in 253 diagnosed concussions to date. Of those, at least 89 were from football, though the actual number is likely higher, as the sport was not specified on some concussion reports. More boys than girls are affected, and our data shows the top three sports for concussions are football, unspecified sport, and soccer. The other thing is I'm very big on educa- tion. We do different things with the schools. We will have a programwhere if high school kids are interested in seeing what it would be like to get into healthcare, they're able to shadow. We're also affiliated with the colleges for anybody who wants to go into healthcare. And remember, that's not just nurses and therapists. We've been part- nering with the community college about different people that work on our facil- ity — HVAC people, forklift operators, and air conditioner maintenance people. We're a whole city, so we should invest in all of those things. We have a partnership with our community college and our colleges on all that, too.