Advancing Health in North Louisiana

The numbers
tell the story.

We all have work to do to contain COVID-19 and its variants. We are partnering with Rockefeller Foundation's Pandemic Prevention Institute to facilitate ending this pandemic and keep another one from happening.

Pandemic prevention institute

MILLION PEOPLE HAVE CONTRACTED COVID-19*

OR MORE EPIDEMIC-LEVEL EVENTS OCCUR EVERY YEAR*

40% OF CURRENT COVID-19 CASES STEM FROM THE DELTA VARIANT*

COUNTRIES ARE SEQUENCING 5% OR MORE OF CASES*

Who We Are

We are members of the communities we serve.

We, as regionaly universities, partner with local health care facilities to offer individual COVID-19 viral genome sequencing.

Our goal is to bring pandemic threat detection and response capabilities to our communities and to others like ours.

What We Do

We perform viral genome sequencing for SARS-CoV-2 Variant Detection.

Because COVID-19 variants continue to drive surges of outbreaks, we analyze the collected samples, track how quickly we can identify new variants, and align these data with what we know about vaccination progress.

Latest Data

How We Do It

We gather RNA samples from volunteer participants via nasal swabs, at a variety of sites.

Our health care partners assist us with sample collection.

Visit our for community members page to learn more about how samples are collected.

Sample Collection

Why We Do It

Public health belongs to all of us and affects all of us.

Over the past year we have watched SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, change and become more infectious. These new variants have had detrimental impacts on the health of people in southern, rural communities.

Performing genomic sequencing and sharing the data allows us to understand these changes in the virus and to use this information to understand impact and prevent future illness and loss of lives.