Bossier City Senator Barrow Peacock is pushing to have a dental school built in the Shreveport/Bossier area, as the only school currently in the state is in New Orleans.
Peacock says to start, Louisiana really needs another dental school in general. He says our residents suffer from low levels of access to oral healthcare.
“We have only 48 dentists per 100,000 people in the state of Louisiana, and the national average is 61 dentists per 100,000,” says Peacock. The issue is being studied thanks to a Legislative request from the last session.
Peacock says north Louisiana, in particular, is underserved, leading to expensive, and dangerous outcomes where people are taking their oral needs to an ER.
“We don’t need the citizens of Louisiana going to an emergency room for their dental care. They need it provided in the right kind of venue, in a clinic setting,” says Peacock.
The Senator believes hosting a school in the north would make it more likely those students would stay in the region after graduation.
Peacock says if you’re going to build a new dental school anywhere, it should be in the healthcare hub that is Shreveport/Bossier. Before the Board of Regents agrees to anything though, they have to answer a several million-dollar question. “How do you pay for this? We have to look at the proper funding. You can’t say let’s have a dental school and not have it properly funded,” says Peacock.
The potential dental school would presumably be a part of LSU Health Shreveport School of Medicine.
