On Wednesday, I attended a briefing on the health challenges of people of New Orleans after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita slammed into the Gulf Coast in 2005. It happened at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation’s Barbara Jordan Conference Center in Washington, D.C.
The panelists were Penny Duckham, vice president and executive director of media fellowships and internships for Kaiser; June Cross, correspondent and filmmaker whose work includes the FRONTLINE documentary The Old Man and the Storm; Diane Rowland, executive vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation and executive director of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. The FRONTLINE documentary, which aired in January, focused on the 18-month journey of a New Orleans family as they try to rebuild their homes and lives.
Other speakers were Kim Boyle, partner with Phelps Dunbar law firm and former member of the Louisiana Recovery Authority and Bring New Orleans Back Commission; and Jed Horne, former metro editor for The Times-Picayune and author of “Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City.” The moderator was Jackie Judd, vice president and senior advisor for communications for the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Challenges facing individuals seeking to recover include limited medical infrastructure and housing and employment opportunities. The storms decimated their physical, medical and social support networks. The Crescent City is one where multigenerational families live within blocks or minutes of one another.
“Ain’t a month don’t pass that they don’t pass by here,” plasterer and builder Herbert Gettridge said about his 36 grandchildren in an excerpt from The Old Man and the Storm. During the film, many interviewees conceded that they could use counseling.
“Family is separated and that makes it that much harder,” said Gettridge’s son, Ronald Gettridge as his voice cracked.
Statements from medical professionals and surveys indicated that suicide and domestic violence rates have been rising since the hurricanes. Before Katrina, New Orleans had high rates of uninsured. The city also ranked at the bottom of different measures of health including infant mortality, AIDS cases and diabetes.
“The rebuilding is not over. There is more work that needs to be done,” Rowland said.
She noted that the city’s health care needs are “not being well met even though some of the resources are available.” The city still needs to recruit and retain medical professionals.
“This really should not happen to another city ever again,” said Boyle, a New Orleans native working to ensure that adequate health care for older residents and others returning because “the city means so much to me.”
Cross said as a nation overestimated how fast it takes to rebuild a city, but underestimated “the people’s faith and resilience to want to get back or to try to recreate a sense of normalcy.”
Horne said that a tremendous piece of therapy is the need to rebuild. He said that clinics co-located in schools and “using schools as other centers for community recovery, community sustenance is an idea that is vital.” He also said it would be ideal to have centers serve as places that are ready, staged in vulnerable communities before an emergency happens, prone to catastrophe.
The panelists said while pledges have been made, there has been extraordinarily little investment in the plan to recover New Orleans.
Boyle said President Barack Obama made it clear before he was elected that what happened in New Orleans was woefully inadequate. She said in light of the current economic crises and two wars, “I think there are going to be limitations on what federal dollars could be sent to New Orleans.”
But the panelists noted that changes are happening and that hope abounds among the people of New Orleans.
“This is a city networked to the rest of the country. … It’s not a cultural oddity and just a place where people get drunk. It’s the city that feeds us in a lot of ways,” Horne said.
Webcast of the briefing: www.kaisernetwork.org/healthcast/kff/04feb09
