Rozycki-Feliciano Lecture Rudolph Matas, the Father of Vascular Surgery

Rudolph Matas (1860-1957) was one of the foremost figures in the history of vascular surgery. He is considered the father of vascular surgery for his operations for arteriovenous fistula and peripheral artery aneurysm, all devised before the isolation of heparin and the wide adoption of techniques for vascular anastomosis. A medical and surgical prodigy, Matas received his medical degree from Tulane University at age 19 (1880) and was named its chair of surgery at 35 (1895), a position he would hold until 1927. A contemporary and friend of Halsted, Matas throughout his career he was known as a leader in the field, holding the presidencies of the American College of Surgeons (1925-1926) and the American Surgical Association (1909). He maintained loyal relationships to those who trained in surgery with him at Touro Hospital in New Orleans, including the author’s grandfather, the first Richard J. Field. Matas was an honored guest at the dedication of the Centreville Clinic in 1928, the facility where three generations of Field surgeons have provided continuous service to its rural Mississippi community for nearly a century.

Team Training for Interprofessional Insight, Networking and Guidance (T2IPING) points: a study protocol

Effective teamwork remains a crucial component in providing high-quality care to patients in today’s complex healthcare environment. A prevalent ‘us’ versus ‘them’ mentality among professions, however, impedes reliable team function in the clinical setting. More importantly, its corrosive influence extends to health professional students who model the ineffective behaviour as they learn from practicing clinicians. Simulation-based training (SBT) of health professional students in team-based competencies recognized to improve performance could potentially mitigate such negative influences. This quasi-experimental prospective study will evaluate the effectiveness and impact of incorporating a multi-year, health science centre-wide SBT curriculum for interprofessional student teams. It targets health professional students from the Schools of Medicine, Nursing and Allied Health at Louisiana State University (LSU) Health New Orleans. The intervention will teach interprofessional student teams key team-based competencies for highly reliable team behaviour using SBT. The study will use the Kirkpatrick framework to evaluate training effectiveness. Primary outcomes will focus on the impact of the training on immediate improvements in team-based skills and attitudes (Level 2). Secondary outcomes include students’ perception of the SBT (Level 1), its immediate impact on attitudes towards interprofessional education (Level 2) and its impact on team-based attitudes over time (Level 3).The Institutional Review Board at LSU Health New Orleans approved this research as part of an exempt protocol with a waiver of documentation of informed consent due to its educational nature. The research description for participants provides information on the nature of the project, privacy, dissemination of results and opting out of the research.

Team Training for Interprofessional Insight, Networking and Guidance (T2IPING) points: a study protocol

Effective teamwork remains a crucial component in providing high-quality care to patients in today’s complex healthcare environment. A prevalent ‘us’ versus ‘them’ mentality among professions, however, impedes reliable team function in the clinical setting. More importantly, its corrosive influence extends to health professional students who model the ineffective behaviour as they learn from practicing clinicians. Simulation-based training (SBT) of health professional students in team-based competencies recognized to improve performance could potentially mitigate such negative influences. This quasi-experimental prospective study will evaluate the effectiveness and impact of incorporating a multi-year, health science centre-wide SBT curriculum for interprofessional student teams. It targets health professional students from the Schools of Medicine, Nursing and Allied Health at Louisiana State University (LSU) Health New Orleans. The intervention will teach interprofessional student teams key team-based competencies for highly reliable team behaviour using SBT. The study will use the Kirkpatrick framework to evaluate training effectiveness. Primary outcomes will focus on the impact of the training on immediate improvements in team-based skills and attitudes (Level 2). Secondary outcomes include students’ perception of the SBT (Level 1), its immediate impact on attitudes towards interprofessional education (Level 2) and its impact on team-based attitudes over time (Level 3).The Institutional Review Board at LSU Health New Orleans approved this research as part of an exempt protocol with a waiver of documentation of informed consent due to its educational nature. The research description for participants provides information on the nature of the project, privacy, dissemination of results and opting out of the research.

BI and Analytics for Effective Disaster Recovery Management Lessons From the Bayou

Disaster recovery management requires agile decision making and action that can be supported through business intelligence (BI) and analytics. Yet, fundamental data issues such as challenges in data quality have continued to plague disaster recovery efforts leading to delays and high costs in disaster support. This chapter presents an example of these issues from the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, where Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc upon the city of New Orleans forcing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to begin an unprecedented cleanup effort. The chapter brings to light the failings in record keeping during this disaster and highlight how a simple BI application can improve the accuracy and quality of data and save costs. It also highlights the ongoing data driven issues in disaster recovery management that FEMA continues to confront and the need for integrated centralized BI and analytics solutions extending to the supply chain that FEMA needs to become more nimble and effective when dealing with disasters.

Whole Lotta COVID Goin' On

It's been a long year-and-a-half or since the initial outbreak arose down here in Louisiana, right after Mardi Gras 2020, February. New Orleans and its widely attended Mardi Gras looked to be the "spreader event" of our region, it seemed like.

A minor theory of direct action politics and performance in New Orleans’ economic justice movement

In this paper, I develop a minor theory that blurs boundaries between prefigurative direct action and symbolic performance to reconsider strategies for resistance and world-building. Drawing on participant observation and interviews of economic justice organizers and activists in New Orleans in 2015, I examine two events through this minor theory: an immigration reform protest and a collaboratively written skit about income inequality. By emphasizing the performance of protest and the potential for protest through performance, I consider how these events empowered activists to make claims on spaces of the city, develop long-term embodied solidarities, disrupt dominant narratives, and en act more just alternatives. These events took place against the backdrop of intensifying racial and economic inequalities in post-Katrina New Orleans, following a long history of both repression and resistance in the city. Through performance-based direct actions, New Orleans’s economic justice movement moves beyond a reactive politics rooted in outrage and anguish toward a direct action politics constructive of a more just world.

Habitat Segregation Patterns of Container Breeding Mosquitos: The Role of Urban Heat Islands, Vegetation Cover, and Income Disparity in Cemeteries of New Orleans

Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus are important pathogen-carrying vectors that broadly exhibit similar habitat suitability, but that differ at fine spatial scales in terms of competitive advantage and tolerance to urban driven environmental parameters. This study evaluated how spatial and temporal patterns drive the assemblages of these competing species in cemeteries of New Orleans, LA, applying indicators of climatic variability, vegetation, and heat that may drive habitat selection at multiple scales. We found that Ae. aegypti was well predicted by urban heat islands (UHI) at the cemetery scale and by canopy cover directly above the cemetery vase. As predicted, UHI positively correlate to Ae. aegypti, but contrary to predictions, Ae. aegypti, was more often found under the canopy of trees in high heat cemeteries. Ae. albopictus was most often found in low heat cemeteries, but this relationship was not statistically significant, and their overall abundances in the city were lower than Ae. aegypti. Culex quinquefasciatus, another important disease vector, was also an abundant mosquito species during the sampling year, but we found that it was temporally segregated from Aedes species, showing a negative association to the climatic variables of maximum and minimum temperature, and these factors positively correlated to its more direct competitor Ae. albopictus. These findings help us understand the mechanism by which these three important vectors segregate both spatially and temporally across the city. Our study found that UHI at the cemetery scale was highly predictive of Ae. aegypti and strongly correlated to income level, with low-income cemeteries having higher UHI levels. Therefore, the effect of excessive heat, and the proliferation of the highly competent mosquito vector, Ae. aegypti, may represent an unequal disease burden for low-income neighborhoods of New Orleans that should be explored further. Our study highlights the importance of considering socioeconomic aspects as indirectly shaping spatial segregation dynamics of urban mosquito species.

Beyond the “Yellowstone Model:” The Origins of National Parks in Brazil and Argentina

Book Review Kaltmeier, Olaf. National Parks from North to South: An Entangled History of Conservation and Colonization in Argentina. Inter-American Studies 34. Trier; New Orleans: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier; University of New Orleans Press, 2021. Freitas, Frederico. Nationalizing Nature: Iguazu Falls and National Parks at the Brazil-Argentina Border. Latin American Studies 122. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021.