Two federally qualified health centers in the Delta will receive a total of $3.6 million over four years from the federal government to expand and strengthen their maternal health services.

Federally qualified health centers are nonprofits that provide health care to under-insured and uninsured patients and receive enhanced reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid. They offer a sliding fee scale for services for patients.

Delta Health Center, with 17 locations throughout the Delta, and G.A. Carmichael Family Health Center, with six locations across central Mississippi, beat out applicants from several southeastern and midwestern states.

Two organizations in Tennessee and one in Alabama were also awarded funding this year.

The grant is focused on improving access to perinatal care in rural communities in the greater Delta region – which includes 252 counties and parishes within the eight states of Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).

It’s the first of its kind in terms of goal and region, said HRSA Administrator Carole Johnson.

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“We have not had a targeted maternal health initiative for the Delta before this program,” Johnson told Mississippi Today. “We’ve had a national competition for rural areas focused on maternal health, but what we were able to do here, in partnership with congressional leaders from the Delta region, was secure some resources that would go directly to the Delta region to be able to address this very important need.”

Johnson said Mississippi applicants stood out because of their ability to identify the most pressing issues facing mothers and babies.

“What we saw from the applicants and awardees in Mississippi was a real commitment to prenatal care and early engagement in prenatal care, reducing preterm births, as well as expanding access to midwives and community-based doula services,” she said. “And all of those pieces together really resonate with the ways we’ve been looking at how to address maternal health services.”

At G.A. Carmichael Family Health Center, the funds will be directed mainly to expanding services in the three Delta counties in which the center has clinics – Humphreys, Yazoo and Leflore.

Yazoo and Humphreys counties are maternity care deserts – meaning they have no hospitals providing obstetric care, no OB-GYNs and no certified nurse midwives – and Greenwood Leflore Hospital closed its labor and delivery unit in 2022. While OB-GYNs still practice in Leflore County, mothers have to travel outside of it to deliver their babies.

Solving the transportation issue will be a top priority, according to the center’s CEO James L. Coleman Jr.

“We have situations where mothers have to travel 100 or so miles just for maternal health care,” Coleman said. “Especially in times of delivery, especially in times of emergency, that is unacceptable.”

Health care deserts pervade Mississippi, where 60% of counties have no OB-GYN and nearly half of rural hospitals are at risk of closing.

Inadequate access to prenatal care has been linked to preterm births, in which Mississippi leads the nation. Preterm births can lead to chronic health problems and infant mortality – in which Mississippi also ranks highest.

That’s why Delta Health Center is committed to using its funds to work together with affiliated organizations – including Delta Health System; Northwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center; Aaron E. Henry Community Health Center; and Converge – to “move the dial” on maternal health indicators across the Delta region, said John Fairman, the center’s CEO.

“We face many challenges including the recruitment and retention of OB-GYNs to the area,” Fairman said, “and will be exploring models of care that are being implemented in other areas of the country that can be adopted to provide greater access and efficiencies for perinatal health care – with the overall goal of significantly decreasing rates of low birthweight and preterm birth in the Delta.”

The United States currently has the highest rate of maternal deaths among high-income countries, and Johnson said this grant is part of a continued effort from the Biden administration to change that.

“The president and the vice president have made maternal health a priority since day one and have really called on all of us across the Department of Health and Human Services to lean in and identify where we can put resources and policy,” Johnson said. “One death is one death too many.”

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This story was originally published by Mississippi Today and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.

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