Is St. Landry unhealthy? Life expectancy for residents is less than many other parishes

Health providers are recruiting mayors and elected officials to help reduce the numerous factors that experts indicate are helping to guide St. Landry Parish into an abyss of unhealthiness.

Select any contributor detrimental to an overall healthy lifestyle – heart disease, obesity, diabetes and smoking – as well as underlying problems such as teen pregnancy, child poverty, alcoholism, mental health and single-parent households – and St. Landry, health officials say, needs to improve in all of those areas.

“There remains a lot of work for us to do in order to improve,” Opelousas General Health System CEO and president Kenneth Cochran told a gathering of St. Landry mayors Wednesday during a meeting in which members of the OGH Foundation Program introduced the mayors to a number of health deficiencies and possible solutions for a parish that Cochran said currently ranks third as the state’s least healthy parish.

Cochran emphasized the parish currently has numerous agencies and well as an increase in rural health clinics that are in place to help St. Landry improve its overall life expectancy rate which ranks four percent lower than other parishes, according to 2022 statistics compiled by the Robert Wood Foundation whose statistics were made available to the mayors attending the conference on Wednesday.

More still needs to be done, Cochran said, to assist St. Landry in improving the health situation, which is the opposite of nearby Lafayette Parish. Lafayette, the Woods Foundation survey indicates, now ranks among the top five healthiest parishes statewide.

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“Agencies such as our law enforcement, the school system, in-school tele-med assistance, child advocacy programs and the other public resources we have are doing their best, but they can’t do it by themselves. It’s just too big. We need to figure out ways to bond together and solve these problems,” Cochran added during the gathering held at the Opelousas Delta Grand Theater.

Timothy Marks, OGH chief for population health and clinical integration, suggested what he described as a comprehensive community health assessment that he said might help identify the overall needs to improve the health for St. Landry.

“We need to bring in more stakeholders. Kids are not always getting the necessary immunizations. We are short in some areas of primary care. We need to begin looking at more resources,” Marks said.

Marks said hospital officials began studying the overall parish health situation closer during the height of the COVID 19 pandemic. It was during those months when COVID infection rates reached double digits that it became apparent St. Landry was going to need further assistance for improving its health deficiencies, Marks noted.

Cochran said transportation to medical facilities is improving in St. Landry. An influx of rural health facilities beginning in 2015 which accept St. Landry Medicaid patients is also helping with access for those unable to have sufficient transportation and income, Cochran said.

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Rene Stansberry, who represented the Foundation, encouraged the mayors to institute the corporate limits as part of a Smoke Free St. Landry initiative.

“In addition (the mayors) also might to look at resolutions or ordinances that can be passed in order to protect the community and gatherings from second-hand smoke,” Stansberry said.

Cochran and Stansberry each targeted prolific smoking parish-wide as perhaps the major contributor that affects the overall health in St. Landry.

The Woods Foundation survey shows 27 percent of adults regularly smoke in St. Landry, which is nearly twice the national average and four percent higher than the rest of Louisiana.

“Nicotine is one of the most addictive substances on the planet and it is not an easy thing for someone to let go. This parish has a high rate of cardiovascular disease,” Cochran said.

Stansberry added that smoking is also a contributing issue for high blood pressure and exacerbates the high rate of diabetes, which also exists in St. Landry.

“We’re seeing a lot of diabetes in the parish as well as hypertension due to smoking,” said Stansberry.

Diabetes prevalence in St. Landry is at 14 percent in 2022, the Woods Foundation report indicates. The average for diabetes nationwide the report shows is eight percent, while in Louisiana that percentage is 11 percent.

Detrimental factors in St. Landry such as child poverty (30 percent), children in single parent households (35 percent) and violent crime well exceed the national and state averages in those categories, the Woods Foundation survey shows.

The median annual household income in St. Landry has risen slightly since 2019 to $39,200, but that figure still ranks low when compared to the Woods Foundation yearly figures of $75,100 nationwide and $51,700 in Louisiana.

Some of the mayors pointed to the parish’s lack of broadband access. In St. Landry broadband is found in 66 percent of households, while in the rest of the state the average is 79 percent, according to the Woods Foundation.

Cochran emphasized that businesses seeking to locate often investigate and healthiness of where they want to place their employees in addition to the economic profile.

“What we are looking at is a grass roots effort. Health affects the economy and we want industry to look here for investing in the parish,” Cochran added.

This article originally appeared on Opelousas Daily World: Is St. Landry unhealthy? Life expectancy for residents is less than other parishes