Healthcare Heavyweights

Although we’re living in an age of hyperbole where headlines and
politicians are apt to cast everything in terms of absolute
disaster or unprecedented achievement, it might be surprising but
no exaggeration to claim that there are institutions and
scientists in Baton Rouge that are world leaders in healthcare.


Dr. John Kirwan is Executive Director of the Pennington
Biomedical Research Center. “Pennington” as it is mostly
referred to locally, is a 30-year-old facility in Baton Rouge
that is arguably the most prestigious research institute in the
world focused on chronic diseases diabetes and obesity. Recently
Pennington has become home to a bariatric treatment center that
is expected to attract the most severely obese patients from
around the world.


Dr. Kirwan came to Pennington in 2017 from the famed Cleveland
Clinic, where he was working on a cure for type II diabetes. When
he came here he brought a couple of dozen researchers with him,
along with their millions in federal research dollars, making
John Kirwan his own Baton Rouge mini economic development engine.


Dr. Barbara Griffith is Chief Executive Officer of Woman’s
Hospital in Baton Rouge. The hospital is one of the largest
birthing centers in the world, delivering more than 8-thousand
babies a year, as well as providing a host of other healthcare
services to women and babies.


Dr Griffith started out as an emergency medicine doctor with 20
years clinical experience. She had only been in the position of
CEO of Woman’s Hospital when she was met the emergency nobody saw
coming: the global coronavirus pandemic.


Healthcare has been a hot topic for years, decades, probably
forever, but at no time in recent memory has it become more
important than in this era of COVID-19, as we as a state, nation
and planet try to navigate a pandemic that has upended every
aspect of our lives and society, and especially our healthcare
system. It’s extraordinary how work being done in Baton Rouge is
so central to the path of healthcare worldwide.


You can see photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at our website.
And check out more lunchtime conversation about the changing
world Baton Rouge healthcare.


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