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With this weekend marking the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans’ comeback battle has been in the national spotlight. On the healthcare front, efforts to improve access to primary care for those underserved has been a major focus, especially as the greater New Orleans area experienced a sharp decrease in primary care physicians in Katrina’s aftermath. Further compounding the problem, Charity Hospital — the primary access point to healthcare for the uninsured — closed permanently after being hit by severe flooding during the disaster. One way the city has been addressing this care delivery gap is by investing in a community-based primary care delivery model — with health centers based inside schools an integral part of this model. Today, the GE Foundation, which is the company’s philanthropic arm, announced a $2 million grant to the Louisiana Public Health Institute as part of GE’s Developing Health program. The funds will underwrite the work led by School Health Connection — a partnership formed after Katrina by local and state governments, universities, hospitals and others — in Orleans Parish, LA.

Back to school: Developing Health is a 3-year, $25 million, GE program that aims to improve access to primary care in targeted underserved communities across the U.S. The grant announced today will be used to grow enrollment in New Orleans’ school-based health centers and extend those health services to neighboring schools, family members and nearby residents. From left to right at today’s ceremony in New Orleans were Keith Singleton, Kyla Davis, Ronesha Turner and Felica Ennis — all Students at Walter J. Cohen High School.

As part of our look at what it takes to make hospitals healthier on Friday, we used New Orleans-based Ochsner Health System as an example of one of the places that is getting it right when it comes to driving better care with increased efficiency. As the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches this weekend, today we take a closer look at Ochsner, which has grown to encompass eight medical centers and more than 35 health centers since the hurricane hit. As you can see in the video below, Ochsner was on the frontlines during the disaster relief efforts following Katrina. And in the true spirit of those rebuilding New Orleans, Ochsner didn’t just survive — it drew on its systematic approach to medicine to become an even stronger, more efficient healthcare presence in the region.

GE’s recent healthymagination thought leadership summit on hospital efficiency took an in-depth look at how medicine is being transformed by measurable new ways to standardize care, reduce errors, and manage critical hospital equipment — and staff — more efficiently. Those changes underway — and the hurdles that doctors and hospital administrators still face in implementing them — are the subject of a new five-part interactive feature, “Healthy Hospitals,” on GE.com. It ranges from videos of hospital staffers who have to juggle operating rooms and equipment use in high-stress environments to the video game, pictured below, that let’s you see just how good (or bad) you might be at trying to alleviate the more than four hours that patients end up waiting on average in an emergency room visit.

Lately, we’ve been increasingly seeing the power of what’s called “design thinking” in the healthcare space. On one end of the spectrum, it’s literally transforming equipment designs to improve efficiency and to humanize the technology so that the anxiety that comes with medical care can be reduced. On the other end is what is called “designing for behavior change” which is all about taking cues from the world of design and applying them in everyday life, so that small lifestyle changes, often fueled by new technologies, can have enormously positive results when it comes to improving health. One example can be seen in Morsel 2.0, a new version of a smart phone app that GE’s healthymagination team launched last year to help people stay healthier by offering up daily, bite-sized, achievable goals that anyone can do to help stay healthier. It’s explained in the “how to” video below:

As we’ve chronicled in our energy “treasure hunt” stories, GE teams are constantly scouring the company’s offices and factories for measurable ways to save water and energy and reduce emissions as part of our ecomagination initiative. So far, about 200 internal treasure hunts have already contributed to savings of over $130 million and the reduction of over 250,000 metric tons of CO2. That process, which is based on a continuous improvement concept created by Toyota, is now part of a new “ecomagination Treasure Hunt” program that GE has launched in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund to help unearth similar savings at cities, universities, and in private industry. Through Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s “Hospital Challenge” — in which 13 of New York City’s largest hospital systems are working together to lower their overall energy footprint — Roosevelt Hospital became the new program’s first site. The hunt identified opportunities for $2.1 million in energy savings with a payback of 2.6 years — which translates into over 7,500 metric tons of emissions being reduced annually. In the video below, Stephen Monez explains how his hospital’s team began its initial work with GE.