HJNO Jan/Feb 2026

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS I  JAN / FEB 2026 13 center] system. We have expanded Medic- aid. On the medical side, on the clinical side, I think we have some real assets. But if you don’t fix the fact that it takes a lot of money just to survive here and that there is a large number of our population — and this is New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and really, particu- larly, rural areas in the state — a large num- ber of people who just don’t have access to those resources, to those opportuni- ties, [then there are] deaths that you have to tackle. The way we can do that in the health department is by working with our part- ners, with our community organizations and traditional healthcare partners, [and with] business partners to invest in universal pro- grams that can provide critical services to everyone or create the conditions in which it’s much easier for individuals to develop healthily, to grow, to stay, and to age. We do a lot in maternal child health, we do a lot in behavioral health, but we also do a lot in food security, which is a huge driver of poor health. And we work closely with our economic development colleagues to fig- ure out equitable approaches to economic development because it has so many ben- efits. That’s what I’m excited to be tackling with our team and the new administration. I think there’s a real awareness of that. And so as we launch into our next Community Health Improvement planning session, which we’ll be launching in the first quar- ter, we’re excited to work with anybody and everybody in the city of New Orleans who has skin in this game. Editor Let’s talk food deserts for a moment. To me, shopping in an average grocery store in Louisiana is the equivalent of asking an alcoholic to buy water at a liquor store: technically possible, but structurally stacked against them. How should public health address a food environment that sets people up to fail? Avegno I think this is anAmerican question. Our food production and delivery system is Figure 1: Supermarket chain locations in Orleans Parish Supermarkets included are Rouses (Orange), Robert’s (Black), Winn Dixie (Red), Canseco’s (Green), Whole Foods (Purple), and Walmart (Blue). Source: New Orleans Health Department. (2024). Making Groceries: Food and Nutrition Insecurity in New Orleans, Louisiana (p. 11). City of New Orleans. https://nola.gov/nola/media/ Health-Department/Images/Making-Groceries-10-3.pdf A Swamp of Snacks, a Desert of Nutrition The food landscape in New Orleans is complex. It is comprised of supermarket chains, small corner stores, farmers markets, urban farms, community supported agriculture (CSAs), food banks, and many more local foodorganizations and businesses. But, as Figure 1 belowshows, depending on where you’re standing, you might see an entirely different reality. This is because food access in New Orleans is characterized by inequity. This becomes evident when you look at the distribution of food stores, the cost of food, and the prevalence of poverty. not set up to incentivize healthy food in the manner that it was just a few generations ago, and so there are some real policy changes, political changes that need to happen for that. But that’s the big answer. What we are trying to do is just make healthy food more accessible to folks who live in those food deserts. And for us, it’s not really a desert, it’s a swamp. We are drowning in bad choice. And I think there [are] different levels to that because hon- estly, if you’re going to cook . . . We all think Louisiana food is so unhealthy, and it can be, but if it is home-cooked with a few tweaks, it actually can be incredibly healthy and good for you and nourishing. How do we help families make those choices? Well, you got to make it easy and cheap for them. And for folks who maybe have grown up on mostly processed food because that was what was available to them, to their fami- lies, because of the way we’ve incentivized food, it’s unthinking that. We’ve done some pilot programs on fresh produce delivery to