Office of Public Health and Medicaid collaboration will use shared data to better connect Louisianians with WIC services
Baton Rouge, La. (November 4, 2026) — The Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) today announced an expanded partnership between its Office of Public Health (OPH) and Louisiana Medicaid to improve health outcomes across the state through greater collaboration and data sharing. Under the initial 18-month pilot program, the two agencies will coordinate and exchange data to connect eligible families with the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).
As part of this data-driven partnership, OPH and Louisiana Medicaid will establish a dedicated, interagency data and analytics team that will bring together subject matter experts, data scientists, and program leaders from both agencies. While OPH and Medicaid both collect and use extensive health data, their data systems support different programs and purposes and have traditionally been managed and analyzed separately. The new team will create a coordinated approach to bringing those distinct but complementary datasets together. Using this data together will give LDH leaders a more complete picture of health needs and priorities across the state, helping them target resources and interventions more effectively to improve health outcomes and lower health care costs.
“We have the data. We have the resources. Now we must put them to work,” said LDH Secretary Bruce D. Greenstein. “By connecting knowledge, identifying gaps, and investing where it matters most, we can deliver real results. That’s how we measure success: healthier people and better lives across Louisiana.”
During the pilot project, LDH will bring Medicaid and WIC data together to identify Medicaid members who are eligible for WIC but have not yet enrolled, enabling more targeted outreach to connect eligible families with WIC benefits.
“We know that so many Medicaid members are also eligible for WIC, and Louisianians should not have to duplicate work to apply for both programs if LDH already has the information on hand,” said Louisiana Medicaid Director Seth J. Gold. “This partnership gives Medicaid and OPH a more coordinated way to use that information, starting with helping eligible families connect with WIC and the nutrition support it provides.”
The pilot project is supported in part by The Pew Charitable Trusts, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization focused on data-driven policy solutions.
“In the short term, data-driven collaborations like the one Louisiana is launching will help accelerate progress on key priorities like maternal and child health,” said David Hyun, who directs state health partnership work at Pew. “Longer term, the goal is for these partnerships to evolve into sustainable, flexible, statewide frameworks that are able to address a wide range of public health issues.”