Lourdes Health System
Camden, Trenton and Newark, N.J.

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The Lourdes Center for Public Health works collaboratively with academic and community partners to identify critical public health challenges, design and implement research and develop intervention strategies for urban and vulnerable populations.

The center provides mentorship to students from a variety of academic institutions including both undergraduate and graduate programs. Over the past three years in conjunction with academic curricula and advising, students have completed more than twenty projects, which have ranged from community based needs assessments to providing homeless medical outreach to studying disparities in food access in Camden and its impact on health.

The center's objective is to utilize results and recommendations from student research to affect change in the Lourdes Health System and its care-delivery system. Student research outcomes confer immediate benefits to communities and help to reduce health care disparities, while providing students with the opportunity to gain valuable experience in public health research and health care settings.

Recognizing the important role that public health and population-based methodologies can play in effective health promotion and disease prevention, the Lourdes Center for Public Health was established in 2006 to engage students in public health studies and activities in the communities served by Lourdes Health System's New Jersey hospitals in Camden and Burlington counties.

Projects for summer 2011 at the Lourdes' Center for Public Health include:

• Breastfeeding Initiative.
• Partnership and support of a needs assessment for the homeless population in Camden.
• Smoking Cessation Project.
• Health Literacy Initiative.
• Patient Health Education Program.
• Senior Services Outreach and Needs Assessment Survey.

The Lourdes Health System is a regional health system known for providing the most sophisticated levels of care. For over five decades, Lourdes has been committed to enhancing the health and wellbeing of southern New Jersey residents and particularly devoted to caring for those most in need. The health system is a Catholic health system sponsored by the Franciscan Sisters of Allegany, N.Y., who came to Camden in 1950 to open Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center which would be a transforming and healing presence in the community. Today, the Lourdes Health System has grown to a two hospital system, Our Lady of Lourdes in Camden, and the Lourdes Medical Center of Burlington County.

The Lourdes Health System is a member of Catholic Health East, a multi-institutional, Catholic health system co-sponsored by 13 religious congregations and consisting of 33 acute care hospitals along the East Coast. Lourdes has become a statewide health system offering services throughout New Jersey.