LSU Health Shreveport chancellor resigns amid shakeup
The leader of LSU's medical school in Shreveport has resigned after months of pressure from an LSU Board member.
David Guzick, who has been chancellor of LSU Health Sciences Center Shreveport since January 2023, sent a letter of resignation Wednesday to the system Board of Supervisors, spokesman Todd Woodward confirmed to the Illuminator.
His resignation follows months of speculation about his potential dismissal after LSU Board member Esperanza Moran called for his dismissal at a board meeting in September. Moran has not spoken publicly about why she supported ousting Guzick.
Moran was at the State Capitol on Wednesday for LSU Day at the legislature. When a reporter approached for comment on Guzick's exit, she waved her hand and walked away.
News of Guzick's departure comes the same day as confirmation that LSU Provost Roy Haggerty will leave his position at the flagship campus. They become the third and fourth high-level administrators to leave the university this year. Kimberly Lewis, executive vice president for finance and chief administrative officer, announced in February she would step down. LSU's top attorney, Winston DeCuir, relinquished his general counsel role in January, though he will remain a faculty member at its law school until.
Guzick had wide support from LSU leadership, including LSU System President William Tate and his top staff at the Shreveport campus. He was praised for getting the medical school removed from probation by its accrediting body.
That accomplishment was described as a 'grand slam home run in the bottom of the 9th to win' by his top staffers in a letter they sent to Tate in March, urging his support for Guzick. A similar letter was sent by 17 department chairs to the LSU Board of Supervisors last month, when the LSU Health Shreveport Faculty Senate approved a resolution in support of Guzick.
The Illuminator asked Tate, who was also at the Capitol Wednesday, why Guzick resigned.
'Who?' answered Tate, who did not respond to further questions.
This is a developing story
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


New York Times
07-08-2025
- New York Times
When Men Talk About Their Feelings
To the Editor: Re 'Why Women Are Weary of the Emotional Labor of 'Mankeeping'' (news article, July 28): Articles like this are how we push more men toward the manosphere. For decades, men have been told to open up, to be vulnerable, to talk about their feelings. We've been asked to stop shutting down and start showing up emotionally. Many of us listened. We did the work. And now we're reading that doing so is a burden to our partners. Articles like this don't just spark debate. They quietly build resentment. They add one more brick to a wall of alienation between men and women. They suggest that even emotionally available men are still failing in some fundamental way. That we are too much, even when we're trying. This is the kind of cultural messaging that drives young men into the arms of figures like Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro and Andrew Tate. Those voices don't rise in a vacuum. They grow in response to articles like this that imply men are either emotionally shut down or emotionally draining. That's a false binary, and a truly harmful one. If we care about healthy relationships and mutual growth, we need to make room for men to express needs without being framed as problems to manage. Otherwise, the wedge will continue to deepen. We will accelerate this death of our beloved country. James DamronNovi, writer, a business executive, is a 44-year-old married father of three. To the Editor: In his 70s, my father forged a meaningful friendship in — of all places — a doctor's waiting room. He and another gentleman were being treated for the same type of chronic leukemia and, discovering that they lived not too far from each other, decided to schedule their clinical visits at the same time and drive into the city together. The other patient was younger than my father and had been a city bus driver, while my father was a renowned optometrist. Nevertheless, their regular commutes enabled deep conversations and mutual discovery, and no doubt gave their wives a break from caregiving. In time, my mother met the friend and his wife and, now that my father has passed, remains in touch with them. Yet the backbone of the relationship was always between the two men. I'm grateful that the anxiety of this period in my father's life was alleviated, even a bit, by the joy of connecting with this new friend. Laurie Greenwald SalomanBasking Ridge, N.J. Supreme Defiance To the Editor: In 'There Really Are Rogue Judges' (Opinion guest essay, Aug. 4), Adrian Vermeule argues that federal district court judges who issue orders reining in President Trump's authority, notwithstanding settled appellate law to the contrary, 'have almost no accountability.' He likens them to 'feudal lords who lay down the law in their local courts,' adding, 'If they are reversed, at least they will have stymied for some time the implementation of presidential policies they find objectionable.' But the more critical issue is with the Supreme Court's majority of conservative justices, who are accountable to no one, and through the court's emergency docket repeatedly set aside district court orders that aim to properly limit the president's authority. (The order to halt President Trump's unconstitutional ban on birthright citizenship is one obvious example.) Technically, these justices are just putting those orders on hold until the Supreme Court can hear the merits of these cases on direct review. But until then, to use Mr. Vermeule's language, the court's conservative justices will have 'stymied' for some time the implementation of constitutional principles they find objectionable. Elliott B. JacobsonScarsdale, writer was an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1985 to 2017. Separating Migrant Families To the Editor: In 'Trump's ICE Uses New Way to Split Migrant Families' (front page, Aug. 6), you report that ICE agents are separating children from their parents if the parents refuse deportation. Eighty years of research entailing thousands of studies conclude that children's sense of security in the world rests primarily upon their reliable access to loving parents or parental figures. When children are forcibly separated from their parents or parental figures, they suffer extreme grief, anger and despair, and they become at high risk for becoming impaired in their physical, cognitive and social-emotional development. When we see ICE agents separating children from decent and loving parents, we are witnessing the traumatization of these children and state-sponsored child abuse. Dyer P. BilgraveBaltimoreThe writer is a clinical psychologist.
Yahoo
25-07-2025
- Yahoo
Mom of Teen Blames Forgetfulness on Menopause. Then She Saw the Scans: 'All I Could Think About Was Not Being There for Her'
April Tate's tumor was deep inside her brain, and growing slowly A single mom is living with a shocking diagnosis. April Tate was working in childcare in Fife, a coastal community in Scotland, in 2018 when she forgot the name of one of the children in her care. April, who was 52 at the time, chalked the lapse up to hormones; as Harvard Health explains, forgetfulness and brain fog are commonly reported symptoms of menopause. But when she mentioned the memory lapse to her doctor, he asked her to come in for an evaluation immediately, according to Daily Mail. That's when doctors scanned her brain — and April was given the devastating news: She had a brain tumor. And while it wasn't cancerous, it was so deep in her brain that it couldn't be removed. As Mount Sinai explains, the type of tumor April has, a posterior falcine meningioma, is slow-growing, but in the part of the brain that focuses on movement, coordination, and "vital body functions such as breathing.' 'When they said I had a brain tumor, my first thought was that I was going to die. It was a numbing moment. I was a single mom, and my daughter Abby was still a teenager. All I could think about was not being there for her,' she told the outlet. 'When the surgeon explained the tumor was located in a really difficult part of my brain and he'd only attempted surgery in that area once before, it was hard to accept.' April was self-employed, which 'brought financial pressure,' as she had to take time off work for treatment, losing income. It 'just added to the stress.' She was told to 'watch and wait,' she says, with regular scans monitoring the tumor's growth. 'For a while, it didn't change much,' she explains. Still, 'it was terrifying to live with the unknown of whether it would grow or not. Over time, I began to adjust.' In late 2022, April was given the bleak news that the tumor had begun to grow, qualifying her for daily radiation. While she says the treatment itself 'was fairly quick each day … it was exhausting.' She had to wear a custom mask to keep her head completely still, a process that she said felt 'claustrophobic and intense … I just closed my eyes, listened to music and tried to stay calm. The hardest part came afterwards, with having to wait to find out if it had worked.' It did, she shared — and while she still has to undergo scans, she's been able to go back to work and increase her physical activity. She ran a 5K this year, and she's taking part in a fundraising challenge via JustGiving to pay for a single day of research at a Scottish brain tumor center. As she explained, 'What shocks me most is how little funding goes into researching brain tumors. That has to change.' And while she is grateful her tumor isn't cancerous, April explains, 'There's something in my brain that shouldn't be there, and it could change at any time. I even worried about how it might affect new relationships and not wanting to burden someone else with what I was going through. But we still deserve to live fully, and to love and be loved.' Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. Read the original article on People


Medscape
23-07-2025
- Medscape
Children's Breakfast Cereal Trending Downward Nutritionally
Consumption of ultraprocessed foods — ie, foods fortified with preservatives, additives, salt, sugar, and added fats — is a global problem, especially in the US. In fact, these foods represent more than half of the average daily energy intake. Contributing to this alarming trend are ready-to-eat breakfast cereals for children, which in the past decade have emphasized ingredients that favor palatability — significantly more sugar, fats, and sodium — vs health (eg, fiber or protein). 'One of the biggest takeaways from our study is that newly launched cereals marketed to children in the US have trended in the wrong direction nutritionally,' Qingxiao Li, PhD, study coauthor and assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, told Medscape Medical News . 'Despite growing attention to child nutrition, the lack of nutritional improvement in this prominent food category suggests that broader dietary challenges persist,' she said. An Unhealthy Start The cross-sectional analysis of product attributes (nutritional content, ingredients, packaging, and target audience) of food and beverage product launches highlighted that between 2010 and 2023, new children's cereals contained a 33.6% increase in total fat (1.13-1.51 g), a 32.1% increase in sodium (156.0-206.1 mg) and a 10.9% increase in sugar (10.28-11.40 g) per serving. Though protein content fluctuated in the earlier years, it declined rapidly (a mean of 1.97 g between 2010 and 2020 to 1.69 g in 2023). A similar trend was seen in fiber content, which by 2023, had dropped to 2.94 g from 3.82 g in the prior 2 years. 'These are standardized changes, so they account for serving size differences,' explained Li. 'It's concerning because it suggests that even the newest options in the cereal aisle, ones you'd hope might reflect progress, are moving away from healthier norms.' Paradoxically, skipping breakfast has been linked to childhood overweight and obesity, as well as cardiometabolic risk. However, the study findings underscored an alarming trend, said Suzanne Cuda, MD, a pediatric and adolescent obesity specialist, Obesity Medicine Association spokesperson, and medical director for Alamo City Healthy Kids & Families in San Antonio. 'If you look at the paper, one serving of breakfast cereal provides 45% of the recommended carbohydrate intake for the day,' she said. 'But most school-aged children are eating way more than that — two to three servings — over 100% of the recommended daily intake. And it's not a nutritious form of carbohydrates.' Cuda explained that children with obesity have insulin resistance due to excessive intake of carbohydrates. 'If they're not burning it all off (and the obesity epidemic is largely due to the fact that most kids are not), over time they become chronically insulin resistant, which leads to dysregulation of glycemia, prediabetes, and ultimately diabetes,' she said. Convenience Over Content As consumers increasingly demand healthier cereals with greater fiber and protein content, there is some indication that the tide is turning. Still, convenience and budget are both top priorities for many Americans. And given the rising costs of groceries, some parents make food purchases that are not always the healthiest. Additionally, about 53.6 million Americans (17.4% of the population) live in low-income, low-access areas that are 0.5-10 miles away from the nearest supermarket, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). 'I think about the overabundance of unhealthy foods, how heavily marketed they are, how available they are almost everywhere, including in different school food environments with competitive food sales,' said Maya Vadiveloo, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Nutrition at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, Rhode Island. 'A lot of kids are having soda and chips with breakfast, and some cereals have moved in the unhealthy direction because they are competing,' said Vadiveloo, who is also chair of the American Heart Association (AHA) Nutrition Committee. 'The AHA has been championing the need to improve the diet because of the already alarming health trajectories.' Amy Reed, a registered dietitian and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, expressed a similar sentiment. 'Depending on the nutritional composition of children's diets, the immediate concern is that they are not getting good nutrition at formidable [formative] periods of their life when they are growing,' Reed said. 'We focus a lot on ages 0-2, but there's a lot of growth that happens after that.' This is especially true of calcium and vitamin D, reinforcing the value of cow's milk, fortified soy milk, or pea protein milk (nut milks are less equivalent). 'A lot of families don't understand that it's important to have a source of calcium and vitamin D throughout childhood and adolescence, and even young adulthood, because you're building bone mineral density (BMD) up until the mid-to-late 20s,' Cuda said. 'You only get one chance; you can't try to recover BMD later in life.' Children's Nutrition at a Crossroads Despite time constraints, pediatricians and family doctors often do as much as they can to advise families on healthy food swaps; organizations like the AHA, the Obesity Medicine Association, and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics also offer a myriad of nutritional resources on their websites. The recently passed federal budget bill includes $186 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, according to the Urban Institute. The program provides food assistance to more than 40 million people, including children, seniors, and those with disabilities. 'We know from other examples in public health that policy is an important piece in regulation to creating an environment that promotes health,' said Erin Hennessey, PhD, dean for Research Strategy and associate professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston. 'By removing long-standing beneficial programs or making changes that limit their ability to provide healthy foods as well as access, we are not going to make our children healthy again; we're actually going to make things worse for them,' said Hennessey, who is also director of the ChildObesity180 program at Tufts University. Recent updates to USDA's School Nutrition Standards track closely with goals of removing highly processed foods and reducing salt, sugar, and fats to counter the trends identified in the breakfast cereal study. Such changes could also help address the challenges posed by the breadth of food deserts in this country. 'I want to stress that this is not about individual choice; rather, it's the system that we're embedded in that is shaping the choices we are and are not able to make,' Hennessey said. 'Parents want what's best for their children, and initiatives like SNAP and School Breakfast [Program] and National School Lunch Program shape children's access to healthy foods and contribute a significant portion of their daily calories.' Findings from the cereal nutrition study served to reinforce that certain foods are cheaper, convenient, and aggressively marketed to kids. 'We need policies that prioritize children's health over all other things,' Hennessey said. The study was funded by grants from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the USDA. Li, Cuda, Vadiveloo, Reed, and Hennessey reported having no relevant financial relationships.