Love — and a love of pigs — is apparent inside the family support home next door to Our Lady of the Lake Children's Hospital in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
There's a paper-mâché pig in the living room area. Pig signage on the doors. A pig mural.
"You have to find joy," said Dr. Shaun Kemmerly, chief medical officer for the hospital. "You can find joy in pigs."
Families of children treated at the hospital can stay for free at the home, called Hogs House. Its full name is Hogs for the Cause Family Support Home at Our Lady of the Lake Children's Hospital.
It opened in February 2024, thanks to community contributions and a $2.25 million pledge from the nonprofit Hogs for the Cause.
The group fundraises year-round to support families and pediatric brain cancer research. It hosts one of the largest barbecue and music festivals in the country each spring in its home base of New Orleans, which Kemmerly and some of her friends and colleagues attend.
"We take a big bus and we go," she said. "It's a lot of fun."
Hogs for the Cause also has helped fund a family support home at Manning Family Children's hospital in New Orleans and is planning one in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Becker Hall, one of the group's founders, said a Hogs House gives families "emotional healing." "It removes a financial burden, and it gives them a sense of community," he said. "It allows families, a lot of times, to stay together."
Kemmerly explained that when Our Lady of the LakeChildren's Hospital, part of the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System, opened as a freestanding hospital in 2019, parents' options were to stay the night in the hospital rooms or at a hotel or travel back and forth from home.
"As we've grown, we're taking care of children from all over the state of Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas," said Kemmerly. "We realized that we were just taking care of kids from farther away. So we felt this would be a huge benefit to our families."
Hogs House allows the hospital to stay true to its mission as a Catholic health care provider, she said.
"It just allows us to give back to the community in a special way that's not necessarily at the bedside or medical, but it's still healing," Kemmerly said. "I think they definitely feel the presence of Jesus Christ, and that's important."
Forming the partnership
Hogs House is in the back corner of the hospital's parking lot, and families can walk there or get a golf cart ride from security. There's a reception space, a living room, a kitchenette stocked with microwaveable foods, washers and dryers, vending machines, and six private rooms on the first floor and six on the second. The private rooms have a queen-sized bed and a single bed. The home also has a "sweet little back yard" and a "sweet little back porch," said Kemmerly.
The community voted on Facebook to name the Hogs House pig mascot Rosie. The vote was a fun way to engage staff and the community, Kemmerly said.
A manager runs the house, and it's staffed 24 hours a day by team members. Security and maintenance staff also provide support.
Kemmerly and others have been working with the hospital's social workers and schedulers to spread the word about Hogs House. A pig-themed celebration on the one-year anniversary of the home's opening helped. Families who stay at the home must demonstrate a financial need, though the parameters are generous, Kemmerly said. In just one year, the Hogs House welcomed 244 families, including 126 who returned for multiple stays.
A relieved family
Amelia Green stays at Hogs House once or twice a month when she brings her 3-year-old son, Maverick, to medical appointments. Maverick has a genetic disorder called campomelic dysplasia. The family lives about 200 miles away in northern Louisiana.
When Maverick was born in early 2022, he was in the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit for 53 days, and the family stayed in the room with him. When Green and her husband got COVID-19 during that time, they had to stay in a hotel.
At Hogs House, they have a welcoming home that eases a financial and emotional burden. "The front desk staff, they're always so nice. Everything's always so clean. It's right by the hospital, so you don't even have to drive," Green said.
And every time Maverick visits, he has to get a picture with the paper-mâché version of Rosie the pig, she said.
"One of my good friend's sons just started seeing the neurologist there, and I told her about the Hogs House, so they also utilize it," she said. "I just think it's a good resource. I try to tell anybody that I can about it."
