The LSU Health Science Center in New Orleans received a $10.6 million grant Tuesday from the Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence of the National Institutes of Health for its Neuroscience Center to study fundamental brain functions. Principal grant investigator Dr. Nicholas Bazan, Boyd professor and director of the Neuroscience Center, said the grant is designed to discover processes in the brain that could lead to the treatment of neurological diseases. “This is a necessary step to understand the disease process and make advancement in these diseases and potentially others as well,” he said. The center and its staff deserve a number of accolades for landing a grant the size of this one. It will enable doctors at the center to research how the brain functions and possibly better the lives of patients for years to come. But while the grant is a boon to the LSUHSC because of its medical applications, the less apparent benefit it brings could help address another problem facing the center – recruitment. According to a recent report in The Advocate, the center has lost roughly 130 medical school faculty members since Hurricane Katrina, and bringing more doctors to the center has proven to be a major struggle especially in specialty areas such as cancer care. The LSUHSC’s inability to bring in quality faculty members has not only hurt the students and the faculty of the center. It has hurt the primary reason the center exists in the first place, to treat patients in the New Orleans area. The center provides an invaluable service to patients in New Orleans. And if it cannot attract talented doctors to the area, hundreds of sick people left with few options after the hurricane will continue to suffer. The staff of the LSUHSC needs to continue to work for grants such as the one given to them Tuesday so they can get back to doing the important work of treating the people of New Orleans.
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