BATON ROUGE – Gov. John Bel Edwards and First Lady Donna Edwards announced the special guests who will join them for the governor’s State of the State address opening the 2018 regular legislative session to a joint session of the Louisiana Legislature.
The special guests are as follows:
Khadija Lamraoui is employed as a mental health technician in Louisiana and will be joining the governor and first lady today in order to share her story of how Medicaid expansion changed her life by giving her access to treatment for an opioid addiction. Khadija fell into the gap of not qualifying for traditional Medicaid, but she also did not receive coverage through her work because it was unaffordable. After receiving healthcare through expansion, she was able to receive treatment through Oxford House. And on April 4, she will have reached her one year milestone of sobriety.
Last year, Louisianans from across the state offered assistance to communities in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico following last year’s Gulf Coast hurricanes. Operators of the Alexandria Mega Shelter, whose doors were opened to residents of Houston and the surrounding areas severely impacted by Hurricane Harvey, will join the governor and first lady to be recognized for their outstanding work. Present for the governor’s speech today will be incident commander, Daniel Doyle, day manager, Sharla Thomas and night manager, Kim McCain.
Louisiana continues to set records in the number of children who find their forever home through the state’s adoption program. This year, Gov. Edwards and the first lady have invited the Moss family to highlight the tremendous blessing of foster care and adoption. Dawn and David Moss have three biological children, but have generously opened their home fostering six children over the years. After doing so, they grew their family by five when they adopted Aubri, who is 8, Thomas, who is 7, Emmett, who is 6, Zane, who is 5, and Luci, who is 4. They will be joined by their Department of Children and Family Services adoption specialist, Judy Batiste.
