LSU Health Shreveport Expands Rural Residency Program Across North Louisiana
March 16, 2026
Educating Doctors Committed to Serving Rural Residents
As many as 44 of Louisiana’s 64 parishes are designated as rural. All but one (West Baton Rouge) are also designated by the Louisiana Department of Health as having less than adequate access to healthcare. This is something LSU Health Shreveport’s rural residency program is working to address, graduating dozens of rural doctors from its clinical site in Vivian, Louisiana, a small town about an hour’s drive north of Shreveport in Caddo Parish. Now, LSU Health Shreveport is expanding its successful program across north Louisiana. Partnering with Franklin Medical Center and Ochsner LSU Health Monroe, the program will place its first residents in the small town of Winnsboro this summer.
“I’m incredibly excited about this program,” said Dr. Christian Bonner, one of the rural residents and LSU Health Shreveport graduates bound for Winnsboro. “Rural Louisiana is a great place to train. You get to serve so many patients, treat more complex cases, and this gives you an advantage compared to training in a major city.”
The logic of the rural residency program in Winnsboro is the same as in Vivian, which both have populations of a few thousand while serving communities who live up to an hour or two away: If you train doctors in rural Louisiana, they’re more likely to stay. As many as six out of the seven family medicine physicians who work at North Caddo Medical Center, the clinical training site in Vivian, graduated from LSU’s rural residency program.
Dr. Christian Bonner, LSU Health Shreveport graduate bound for Winnsboro for his rural residency this summer.
“It’s been wonderful to see this rural residency program come to fruition to help strengthen our services. Our patients deserve doctors who are committed to and live in the community. Not a revolving door of people who fly in from wherever from a staffing company. That’s why we’re thrilled to be working with LSU. We were immediately on board when they approached us.”
Dr. Logan Atkins, family medicine physician at Franklin Medical Center and site director of LSU Health Shreveport’s new rural residency program in Winnsboro