HJNO Jul/Aug 2026

DIALOGUE could be in diabetes, in congestive heart fail- ure, in smoking cessation rates. One by one, we’re organizing to achieve those goals. The second one is to develop a com- prehensive mental health plan. It sounds bizarre, but our state has never had one comprehensive plan for everyone, not just for Medicaid or one agency within the department, but across our entire state. And that continuity of care across all ele- ments, whether you’re in a publicly funded program or private, it’ll be the first time we take steps to develop that plan. The third piece is to run the most efficient health department in the nation. We have so much of the state’s money, and by that I mean the Department of Health spends over 53% of the entire state budget. And if we don’t have the confidence and trust of all Louisianians, we can’t do our job as well, and so we want to be sure and give confi- dence to everyone that this department is being run incredibly efficient and effective. The next piece is to reform our health and nutrition programs. Our department runs both the WIC and the SNAP program. Together, we’re responsible for helping feed between 700,000 and 800,000 Louisian- ians. Oftentimes those programs, at least in the past, were not aligned with trying to get a health outcome out of it; it was just to pro- vide money for food. And you might have seen earlier this year we began the imple- mentation of the Healthy Food Waiver in the SNAP program eliminating candy, soft drinks, or some type of soft drinks and energy drinks, from what you could use your SNAP benefit on. And over time, we’ll continue to migrate that program to more and more healthy food options. We have a big initiative going on now in rural communities with our Rural Health Transformation grant. Over the next five years, we will bring in over $1 billion in a grant that we got from the federal govern- ment, and we’re right now beginning that implementation process, which we can go into later in the program. healthcare that there is in the country. And I felt like there was a big opportunity with this governor and the state of play in our state with great leadership and our health sys- tems and our health plans, those that work at the community level in our FQHCs and health clinics and community-based orga- nizations. I just feel like the state is primed to make some big moves, and being a part of that was just irresistible, and here I am. Editor Well, welcome back. Greenstein Thanks. Editor You said we were poised to make big moves. What do you see those big moves as being? Greenstein We’ll talk about these three themes that the governor has set out for us and then we’ll go through some of these priorities. The governor’s themes really are about improving health outcomes for all Louisianians, and this means really getting our programs organized so that we’re able to make a measurable difference and I’ll go into that deeper in a second. The second theme is helping Louisianians move from dependence to independence. And by that, we look at our programs not as a final destination, well, some might be, but the vast majority, we should be think- ing about the programs that we operate as tools or assistance for people to live to their full potential and achieve prosperity, not just being on public benefits to stay on public benefits. And then the third piece, we think about putting patients over bureaucracy, and that means we have the opportunity to change the mechanics and the administration of how healthcare works in our state — and that means cutting out the middleman. You’ve seen we’ve done a lot in the last year on PBMs. We’ve done reforms with our health plans to make it easier to get your healthcare, and not be hung up by your health plan for so long, and to make it easier to get your care in health systems. And that means making it easier for your doctor to not have to do as much administrative work so that they could focus more time on patient care. So those are the big themes that get me excited, and get the team at LDH fired up every day. When we think about how do we go ahead and execute against those key themes — and this is what I think about as our 10 biggest strategies. We call them the Power 10 inside of LDH. The first, again, is overwhelmingly improve health outcomes for all Louisianians. That’s a must. We’re doing it today. If we look at all these discrete individual measures, and as we look at them over time, we’re seeing improvement, and then all of the new programming that we’re putting into place, which is quality measures for hospitals, quality measures for managed care plans. They’re all very specific with the goal of improving health outcomes. And that “Our state has never had one comprehensive [mental health] plan for everyone, not just for Medicaid or one agency within the department, but across our entire state. And that continuity of care across all elements, whether you’re in a publicly funded program or private, it’ll be the first time we take steps to develop that plan.”