Once again, Louisiana has waddled to the bottom of the heap, surpassing even Mississippi as the unhealthiest state in the union. That’s according to the American Public Health Association and the Partnership for Prevention advocacy group’s 19th annual state-by-state rankings. Vermont, for the second year in a row, outpaced other states as the healthiest place to live. Key factors measured to come up with the rankings include obesity, smoking, binge drinking, health insurance coverage, air pollution, infectious disease rates, crime levels and immunization coverage. Contributing to Louisiana’s last place showing were the abysmal numbers for health insurance — one in five Louisiana residents lack coverage, according to the report. Other statistics show 31 percent of the population to be obese. High rates of child poverty, infant mortality and premature death rates also contributed to Louisiana’s dead last spot. To read the entire report, click here.
Is it a crime for citizens to photograph, video, or take notes of a police officer in the line of duty, or a right protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution? Locally, such activity, as witnessed recently, will at the very least result in a night spent behind bars.
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
At Thursday's State of the Economy luncheon, LEDA President and CEO Gregg Gothreaux said PXP has already quietly hired 180 people for its Broussard expansion.
Episcopal School of Acadiana’s Dr. Joshua Caffery, chair of the school’s English Department, is headed to Washington, D.C., and the Library of Congress as the latest winner of the Alan Lomax Fellowship in Folklife Studies.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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