Louisiana Medicaid is awarding more than $673,000 in Medicaid federal dollars to the LSU Health Sciences Center (LSUHSC) and Pennington Biomedical Research Center (PBRC) to conduct research on covered Medicaid priorities over a two-year period. 

Findings from the research projects will guide policy-making and promote innovation and new approaches to address Medicaid priorities. These priorities include improving maternal and neonatal outcomes, improving early childhood health and development, reducing deaths and illness with a focus on preventive care, improving mental health and substance use outcomes, and improving health equity. 

The awards are part of the Louisiana Department of Health's (LDH) inaugural Public University Partnership Program (PUPP). Forging new strategic partnerships with Louisiana’s public universities and colleges is a key initiative in the Fiscal Year 2022 LDH Business Plan.

“Leveraging the expertise of public universities and colleges to inform Louisiana Medicaid policy and program operations will help LDH better understand and improve the outcomes and the cost-effectiveness of covered services,” said LDH Secretary Dr. Courtney N. Phillips. “In turn, the public universities and colleges benefit from a partnership with LDH through federal funding, new opportunities for students and junior researchers, and access to real-world data to maximize the impact of their research.”

Louisiana joins 25 other states that have similar research funding opportunities for universities. The research projects will cover pressing health issues including opioid use disorder (OUD) and diabetes. The recipients will receive a total of $673,211 for the following projects:  

Louisiana State University, Health Sciences Center 

Health Policy Honors Program Contributions to Promoting Evidence-Based Care to Louisiana Medicaid members

• Principal investigator Peggy Honore, Ph.D.
• $110,796 over two years

Promoting Resilience for Louisiana Medicaid Members with OUD

• Principal investigator Dr. Benjamin Springgate
• $180,841 over 16 months

Pennington Biomedical Research Center, LSU System

Optimizing Use of Continuous Glucose Monitoring Devices in the Medicaid Diabetes Population

• Principal investigator Ronald Horswell, Ph.D.
• $171,126 over one year

Trends in the incidence of gestational diabetes mellitus and hypertensive disorders of pregnancy and their associations with adverse pregnancy outcomes among the Louisiana Medicaid population

• Principal investigator Gang Hu, Ph.D.
• $210,448 over two years

"This outstanding partnership between LSU Health-New Orleans' Center for Healthcare Value and Equity and the Louisiana Department of Health will inform evidence-based policy solutions and advances in access to high quality of care for Medicaid members. Our PROUD project (Promoting Resilience among Medicaid Members with Opioid Use Disorder) will foster new approaches to tackle the opioid epidemic in Louisiana - one of the state’s and nation’s most urgent priorities for population health and health equity," said LSU Health Sciences Center's Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine Dr. Benjamin Springgate.

“Our objective in this collaboration with LDH is to identify feasible, actionable opportunities to improve health outcomes in Louisiana and, in particular, to identify and act on those opportunities that will reduce the significant outcomes disparities in the Louisiana population," said Dr. Ronald Horswell, associate professor of research, population and public health, at Pennington Biomedical Research Center.

The federal funding provides up to a 50% match to money from partnering universities' Certified Public Expenditures.

PUPP’s next Notice of Funding Opportunity is open now until Aug. 15, 2022. For more information or to apply, visit https://ldh.la.gov/page/4201.