Building a Healthier Gulf Coast: LPHI Named a $20M Gulf Futures Award Winner
Shelina Davis, MPH, MSW
Chief Executive Officer
Health is the foundation of resilience — without it, people and communities cannot recover or thrive. The Gulf Coast faces a growing crisis: climate-driven disasters are disrupting healthcare when it is needed most. Hurricanes, flooding, and extreme heat increasingly strain an aging electrical grid, leaving communities — especially low-income, rural, and historically marginalized populations — without power, clean water, or access to essential medical care. Community Health Centers (CHCs), which serve as lifelines for over 4 million Gulf Coast residents, are particularly vulnerable. When clinical operations are disrupted, patients lose access to primary care, behavioral health support, lifesaving medications, and connections to community resources, impacting short- and long-term health outcomes, and resilient recovery.
Keeping Gulf Coast clinics open and secure during disruptions ensures communities stay prepared, recover faster, and emerge stronger from future challenges. In partnership with Gulf Coast communities, CHCs, primary care associations, renewable energy partners, community-based organizations, and academic partners, I am thrilled to announce that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Gulf Research Program has awarded $20 million to the Louisiana Public Health Institute for it's Gulf Hub initiative, through the Gulf Futures Challenge, a $50 million initiative to fund projects that apply, translate, or communicate science, engineering, or medical knowledge to produce inclusive, innovative, and transformative solutions to the key challenges facing the Gulf Coast region.
Gulf Hub is a five-year partner-powered Gulf Coast project that will not only protect health, the foundation of resilience, but also advance health equity, community empowerment, and transform resilience outcomes along our coast. Gulf Hub will redefine what it means to deliver healthcare in a changing climate.
Gulf Hub is positioned to succeed, led by LPHI, in collaboration with our valued partners, including:
Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida Primary Care Associations
University of Miami Global Institute for Community Health and Development
Gulf Hub offers a bold solution: transform Gulf Coast CHCs into Learning Resilience Hubs — energy-independent, climate-adaptive healthcare facilities that remain operational before, during, and after disruptions and disasters. By integrating solar+storage microgrid technology, robust communications systems, enhanced programming, and flood-resistant infrastructure, these hubs will ensure uninterrupted care. Gulf Hub will also embed the Gulf Hub Data Network, a regional data warehouse and patient-centered research network to drive clinical quality improvement in CHCs to support care delivery across providers and state lines, provide access to patient health records during times of disaster and evacuation, and generate evidence on disaster resilience in healthcare. The multifaceted approach of combining resilient power with community engagement and data-driven learning will advance CHCs in their role as anchors of community well-being and innovation. For patients, this means uninterrupted access to medications, primary care and chronic disease management, and behavioral health support — even during crises.
Over the next five years, I am excited to share that Gulf Hub will deliver measurable impact:
Resilient Healthcare: CHCs will operate with renewable energy, reducing electrical grid dependency and ensuring continuity of care during disruptions. This will prevent thousands of canceled visits, medication lapses, and equipment failures, safeguarding health for vulnerable populations.
Engaged Communities: Gulf Hub will increase community participation in CHC disaster preparedness planning and patient-centered applied research, ensuring that resilience strategies and healthcare quality improvement projects reflect lived experience and local priorities.
Learning Infrastructure: Gulf Hub Data Network will establish a regional health data system for the Gulf Coast, providing secure, cross-provider and cross-community access to health information. It will enable tracking of health outcomes, inform new research, and ensure continuity of health record access during disruptions and disasters, and across health systems and/or state lines during major disasters that demand evacuations.
Collectively, these impacts will lead to better health outcomes across Gulf Coast communities, supporting the foundation of resilient communities.
I know this vision is bold, and it also will be transformative, catalyzing our collaborative commitment to the health, safety, and resiliency of millions of people across the Gulf Coast served in CHCs to be better supported through an adaptive and future-ready healthcare ecosystem. This model can and will scale, informing policy, infrastructure investment, and patient-centered clinical practice in disaster-prone regions.