Mississippi Today
New Health Department program puts nurses in the homes of high-risk moms, babies in Mississippi

Through a partnership between the state Health Department and the state Division of Medicaid, Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies program places registered nurse case managers in the homes of pregnant mothers undergoing high-risk pregnancies.
Since launching, it has expanded to 23 full-time nurses and 17 part-time nurses providing services to about 640 patients around the state.
State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney said the program is “plugging the gap” by bringing resources to small rural communities that aren’t there.
“With limited resources for mothers and babies, a lot of our efforts are going to be directed to our highest impacted areas to help the folks in the most desperate need the fastest,” Edney said.
The way resources are distributed across the state – sparsely in rural and remote areas but plentiful in certain others – means the program must take a targeted approach.
“We can not look at Mississippi as one organism. We are really six different regions when it comes to public health in terms of populations, demographics, resources available and challenges,” Edney explained. “I have to have different strategies for different areas. The one-size fits all strategy won’t work.”
Dr. Justin Turner, chief medical officer at the state Health Department, witnessed personally how important access to quality health care for mothers is.
Turner’s wife made 23 total visits to five different hospitals or emergency rooms during her last two pregnancies.
Seven out of 23 of those visits came during her pregnancy five years ago, and the remainder of the visits came during their second pregnancy in August 2022. During her last pregnancy, she experienced “uncharacteristic pain” around month five, requiring her to be supervised by her family 24 hours a day until she gave birth.
The pain would spiral out of control resulting in psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES), previously known as pseudoseizures – emotional and stress-related episodes similar to epileptic seizures but not of neurological origin.
As the number of trips increased, Turner said he had a tough time reassuring his family and himself.
“I was thinking, 'how do I continue to do what I’m supposed to do as the chief medical officer and help assist the state as a whole, when I can’t even help my wife at home?'” Turner told Mississippi Today.
For Black women in Mississippi, the pregnancy-related mortality rate increased from 51.9 to 65.1 deaths per 100,000 live births, quadruple the rate of white women (16.2). With this data in mind, fears of the worst outcome flooded both Turner and his wife’s minds.
“It was natural for me to think that my wife was going to be another statistic,” Turner explained. “She would ask me things like, ‘Baby, am I going to die?’”
The pregnancy remained a challenge until the day that she delivered their child by cesarean section. Every day prior to her being pregnant was “a day of misery,” Turner said. After delivery, his wife never experienced another pseudoseizure episode.
Turner said fortunately for his wife, she had a husband who is a doctor, an OB-GYN, support from family and friends, and a great health care team.
However, he couldn't help but think of how many mothers in Mississippi lack support. Turner said the Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies program aims to add emotional support for mothers who may be in need of it.
“For a lot of women, they benefit from the nurturing and feeling like someone is listening,” Turner continued. “The more people that’s on their team, the better it helps them to endure the process of pregnancy itself.”
As services are being provided to participants, Turner said the health department, stakeholders, policy makers and community members must collaborate to improve outcomes for mothers and their babies.
“We need to find common ground in the areas that we can improve and make sure that we are providing our moms and babies a decent chance at having a healthy pregnancy and coming into this world,” Turner said.
As a Medicaid-reimbursed program, Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies allows mothers to receive monthly targeted case management, health education, and assessments by nurses, social workers and nutritionists at no direct cost to them.
For moms with Medicaid, the services are reimbursed. Edney said the program works with uninsured moms to help them enroll in Medicaid or, if they are not eligible, will provide the services for free.
The Mississippi State Health Department declined Mississippi Today's request to interview a mother who has participated in the program.
After making contact with a mom in need, the nurse consults with the mother’s doctor, who shares why she may be considered high-risk. Common high-risk conditions include preterm labor, diabetes, multiple pregnancy losses and starting prenatal care late.
The nurse then works to mitigate her symptoms by going to the mother's home and pairing her with a multidisciplinary team of resources, such as social workers and nutritionists.
The team of health care workers educate her on the importance of prenatal care, diet plans and how to limit her chances of becoming high-risk in the future. Edney said the program is “working aggressively” to support affected Medicaid moms.
“In our last reporting from the maternal mortality review committee, 87% of deaths were Medicaid moms, and out of all of our maternal deaths, 80% were preventable,” Edney told Mississippi Today. “That is unacceptable.”
Currently, 86% of the participating mothers are Medicaid beneficiaries.
Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies monitors not only high-risk mothers but also high-risk babies up to one year of age.

A baby is considered high risk if they are born prior to 37 weeks of gestation, weigh less than 5 pounds 8 ounces at birth, have genetic disorders, experience nutritional deficiencies, infections, or live in unsafe conditions among other factors as well.
The average age of infants enrolled in the program is less than one month old.
The goal of the program is to increase the infant's chances of survival, Edney said. Mississippi leads the nation in its rate of infant mortality.
“I know that if we continue doing what we are doing, nothing is going to change. So, if we all agree we have a problem, which I think everybody does, then this has got to change,” Edney stated. “I don’t have to convince anybody that being 50th in the nation for dead babies is a good thing, because it isn’t.”
The Health Department plans to expand the program so that more women and babies in rural communities have access to necessary care.
Around 35% of babies were born to women living in rural counties of the state, but only a quarter of maternity care providers practice there, according to the latest March of Dimes’ report.
Jillian Harper-Peavy, the state program director for Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies, said partnerships with different individuals and organizations are critical for the program to expand.

Those organizations include community health centers; hospitals; OB-GYN offices; pediatricians; managed care organizations; and other maternal and child health programs.
“We are prioritizing outreach and engagement of patients continually, as we do want to see the program serve more pregnant women and infants,” Harper-Peavy continued. “As additional patients are enrolled, we will continue to assess our staffing capacity and plan accordingly.”
However, financial constraints have hindered its expansion.
Earlier this year, Edney asked lawmakers to fund $9 million to hire nurses needed to fully staff county health departments and Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies. The request was denied.
Now, Edney said he is seeking to redirect the funding he has and cut back in every department possible to hire the 100 or so nurses he’s identified as potential job candidates.
“I’m trying to provide core public health services around this state with a battered workforce,” Edney explained. “I try to get people to understand that while everybody else may be over COVID-19, the health department is not. We were beaten to pieces, and we’re working hard to rebuild our workforce with the resources that we have.”
Susan Bates, nurse team lead in the northeastern region of the state, manages a team of nurses who serve patients in 11 counties, seven of which are maternal health deserts: Marshall, Benton, Tippah, Pontotoc, Prentiss, Tishomingo and Itawamba.
These counties have no hospitals or birthing centers that provide obstetric care, and no practicing OB-GYNs or certified nurse midwives.
Across the state, 51.2% of counties are defined as maternity care deserts, compared to 32.6% nationally.
Bates, who cares for an average of six to 10 mothers and babies each day, has encountered women experiencing preterm labor, preterm delivery, preeclampsia, anxiety and depression. She’s also cared for premature and low-birthweight babies.
With more than 26 years of nursing experience, Bates said she aims to make every patient feel respected, valued and heard. Her approach is to listen, understand and “not just focus on checking a box.”
“I feel that it is important to establish a relationship of trust between the mother and her doctors that way we can promote and foster communication. This allows us to provide a more comprehensive care and therefore improve our patients’ outcomes,” Bates continued. “So, when we meet our patients' needs, consistently and correctly, they develop trust in us as their caregiver.”
The Corinth native previously worked for the Mississippi State Health Department for 11 years as a public health nurse, promoting and protecting the health of populations using knowledge from nursing, social and public health science.
Bates, who is certified in pediatric advanced life support and neonatal advanced life support, said caring for high-risk mothers and babies requires a calm demeanor to help the family through what can be a scary time.
“If you look at the big picture, then it may seem overwhelming, but we can’t be stopped by that. We have to know that what we are doing makes a difference to each patient,” Bates explained. “One life at a time, we’re making a difference.”
Edney said that scoring poorly in maternal and infant mortality is a “heavy burden” that requires a “heavy lift” to flip the negative trend to a positive one.
“It’ll take years, but with the work that we’re going to do with the agency, I’m convinced that we will not only get off the bottom with infant mortality,” Edney stated, “we will get off the radar.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Pharmacy benefit manager reform likely dead
Hotly contested legislation that aimed to increase the transparency and regulation of pharmacy benefit managers appeared dead in the water Tuesday after a lawmaker challenged the bill for a rule violation.
The bill was sent back to conference after Rep. John Hines, D-Greenville, raised a point of order challenging the addition of code sections to the bill, which will likely kill it.
House members in the past have chosen to turn a blind eye to the rule, which would require the added code sections to be removed when the bill is returned to conference. This fatal flaw will make it difficult to revive the legislation.
“It will almost certainly die,” said House Speaker Jason White, who authored the legislation. “And you can celebrate that with your pharmacist when you see them.”
“…This wasn’t ‘gotcha.’ Everybody in this chamber knew that code sections were added, because the attempt was to make 1123 more suitable to all the parties.”
The bill sought to protect patients and independent pharmacists, who have warned that if legislators do not pass a law this year to regulate pharmacy benefit managers, which serve as middlemen in the pharmaceutical industry, some pharmacies may be forced to close. They say that the companies’ low payments and unfair business practices have left them struggling to break even.
The bill underwent several revisions in the House and Senate before reaching its most recent form, which independent pharmacists say has watered the bill down and will not offer them adequate protection.
House Bill 1123, authored by White, originally focused on the transparency of pharmacy benefit managers. The Senate then beefed up the bill by adding provisions barring the companies from steering patients to affiliate pharmacies and prohibiting spread pricing – the practice of paying insurers more for drugs than pharmacists in order to inflate pharmacy benefit managers’ profits.
Independent pharmacists, who have flocked to the Capitol to advocate for reform this session, widely supported the Senate’s version of the bill.
The Senate incorporated several recommendations from the House into its bill, saying that they believed that the legislation would have the House’s support.
Instead, the House sent the bill to conference and requested additional changes, including new language that would eliminate self-funded insurance plans, or health plans in which employers assume the financial risk of covering employees’ health care costs themselves, from a section of the bill that prohibits pharmacy benefit managers from steering patients to specific pharmacies.
This language seeks to satisfy employers, who argue that regulating pharmacy benefit managers’ business practices will lead to higher health insurance costs.
Sen. Rita Parks, R-Corinth, who has spearheaded pharmacy benefit manager reform efforts in the Senate, previously said that adding the language to the bill would “remove any protection out of the law.” But she signed the conference report that included the language Monday after a heated conference meeting between lawmakers.
Rep. Hank Zuber, R-Ocean Springs and co-author of the bill, said the bill has something for everybody, gesturing to its concessions for employers and independent pharmacists. He said the bill gives independent pharmacists 85% of what they wanted.
Mississippi Independent Pharmacies Association director Robert Dozier was not available for comment by the time the story published.
Zuber told House members Tuesday to “blame the Senate” for the slow progress of pharmacy benefit manager reform in Mississippi, citing the body’s failure to take up a drug pricing transparency bill half a decade ago, for three years in a row.
“If the Senate had followed the leadership and the legislation that we drafted those many years ago, we would not be here,” Zuber said. “We would have the information on drug pricing, we would have the information and transparency on (pharmacy benefit managers) and we would have the ultimate reason as to why drug costs continue to rise.”
Members of the House expressed dissatisfaction with the legislation Tuesday, arguing it did not do enough to ensure lower prescription drug costs for consumers.
“I’m going to try to do something next year that goes even further,” Zuber responded.
For the past several years, lawmakers have proposed bills to regulate pharmacy benefit managers, but none have made it as far as this session.
“We’ll go another year,” said White.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Feuding GOP lawmakers prepare to leave Jackson without a budget, let governor force them back
After months of bitter Republican political infighting, the Legislature appears likely to end its session Wednesday without passing a $7 billion budget to fund state agencies, potentially threatening a government shutdown if they don’t come back and adopt one by June 30.
After the House adjourned Tuesday night, Speaker Jason White said he had presented the Senate with a final offer to extend the session, which would give the two chambers more time to negotiate a budget. As for now, the 100 or so bills that make up the state budget are dead.
The Senate leadership was expected to meet and consider the offer Tuesday evening, White said. But numerous senators both Republican and Democrat said they would oppose such a parliamentary resolution, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann has also said it’s unlikely and that the governor will have to force lawmakers back into special session.
White said he believes, if the Senate would agree to extend the session and restart negotiations, lawmakers could pass a budget and end the 2025 session by Sunday, only a few days later than planned.
But if the Senate chooses not to pass a resolution extending the session, White said the House would end the session on Wednesday.
It would take a two-thirds vote of support in both chambers to suspend the rules and extend the session. The Senate opposition appears to be enough to prevent that.
Still, the speaker said he believes Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Senate leaders are considering the proposal. But he said if he doesn’t hear a positive response by Wednesday, the House will adjourn and wait for Gov. Tate Reeves to call a special session at a later date.
“We are open to (extending the session), but we will not stay here until Sunday waiting around to see if they might do it,” White said.
White said leaving the Capitol without a budget and punting the issue to a special session might not cool tensions between the chambers, as some lawmakers hope.
“I think when you leave here and you end up in a special session, some folks say, ‘Well everybody that’s upset will cool down by then.’ They may, or it may get worse. It may shine a different and specific light on some of the things in this budget and the differences in the House and Senate,” White said. “Whereas, I think everybody now is in the legislative mode, and we might get there.”
The Mississippi Constitution does not grant the governor much power, but if Gov. Tate Reeves calls lawmakers into a special session, he gets to set the specific legislative agenda — not lawmakers.
White said the governor could potentially use his executive authority to direct lawmakers to take up other bills, such as those related to education, before getting to the budget.
“When we leave here without a budget, it is entirely the governor’s prerogative to when he (sets a special session) and how he does that.”
While the future of the state’s budget hangs in the balance, lawmakers have spent the remaining days of their regular session trying to pass the few remaining bills that remained alive on their calendars.
House approves DEI ban, Senate could follow suit on Wednesday
The House on Tuesday passed a proposal to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs from public schools, and both chambers approved a measure to establish a form of early voting.
The House approved a conference report compromise to ban DEI programs and a list of “divisive concepts” from K-12 schools, community colleges and universities. If the Senate follows suit, Mississippi would join a number of other Republican-controlled states and President Donald Trump, who has made rooting DEI out of the federal government one of his top priorities.
The agreement between the Republican-dominated chambers follows hours of heated debate in which Democrats, all almost of whom are Black, excoriated the legislation as a setback in the long struggle to make Mississippi a fairer place for minorities. Legislative Republicans argued the legislation will elevate merit in education and remove from school settings “divisive concepts” that exacerbate divisions among different identity groups.
The concepts that will be rooted out from curricula include the idea that gender identity can be a “subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality.” The move reflects another effort to align with the Trump administration, which has declared via executive order that there are only two sexes.
The House and Senate disagreed on how to enforce the act, but ultimately settled on an agreement that would empower students, faculty members and contractors to sue schools for violating the law, but only after they go through an internal campus review process that would give schools time to make changes. The legislation could also withhold state funds from schools that don’t comply.
Legislature sends ‘early voting lite’ bill to governor
The Legislature also overwhelmingly passed a proposal to establish a watered down version of early voting, though the legislation is titled “in-person excused voting,” and not early voting.
The proposal establishes 22 days of in-person voting before Election Day that requires voters to go to the circuit clerk’s office or another location county officials have designated as a secure early voting facility, such as a courtroom or a board of supervisors meeting room.
To cast an early vote, someone must present a valid form of photo ID and list one of about 15 legal excuses to vote before Election Day. The excuses, however, are broad and would, in theory, allow many people to cast early ballots.
Examples of valid excuses are voters expecting to work on Election Day, being at least 65 years old, being currently enrolled in college or potentially travelling outside of their county on Election Day.
Since most eligible voters either work, go to college or are older than 65 years of age, these excuses would apply to almost everyone.
“Even though this isn’t early voting as we saw originally, it makes this more convenient for hard working Mississippians to go by their clerks’ office and vote in person after showing an ID 22 days prior to an election,” Senate Elections Chairman Jeremy England said.
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves opposes early voting, so it’s unclear if he would sign the measure into law or veto it.
Both chambers are expected to gavel at 10 a.m. on Wednesday to debate the final items on their agenda.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
‘A lot of us are confused’: Lacking info, some Jacksonians go to wrong polling place
Johnny Byrd knew that when his south Jackson neighborhood Carriage Hills changed wards during redistricting last year, his neighbors would have trouble finding their correct polling place on Election Day.
So he bought a poster board and inscribed it with their new voting location – Christ Tabernacle Church.
“I made a sign and placed it in front of the entrance to our neighborhood that told them exactly where to go so there would be no confusion,” said Byrd, vice president of the Association of South Jackson Neighborhoods.
Still, on April 1, a car full of voters from a senior living facility who should have gone to Christ Tabernacle were driven to their old polling place.
“I thought it was unfortunate they had to get there and find out rather than knowing in advance that their polling location was different,” said Sen. Sollie Norwood, a Democrat from Jackson who was on the ground Tuesday helping constituents with voting.
One of those elderly women became frustrated and said she no longer wanted to vote, Norwood said, though her companions tried to convince her otherwise. By midday Tuesday, 300 people had voted at Christ Tabernacle, one of the city’s largest precincts currently in terms of registered voters, but among the lowest in turnout historically.
Voting rights advocates and candidates vying for municipal office in Jackson are keeping an eye on issues facing voters at the polls, though without official results, it remains to be seen if that will dampen turnout this election with the hotly contested Democratic primary.
“I still believed it was gonna be low,” Monica McInnis, a program manager for the nonprofit OneVoice, said of turnout. “I was expecting it would be a little higher because of what is on the ballot and how many people are running in all of the wards as well as the mayor’s race.”
The situation is evolving as the day goes on, but the main issues are twofold. One, thousands of Jackson voters have new precinct locations after redistricting last year put them into a new city council ward.
Two, some voters didn’t realize their polling place for the municipal elections may differ from where they voted in last year’s national elections, which are run by the counties.
In Mississippi, voters are assigned two precincts that are often but not always the same: A municipal location for city elections and a county location for senate, gubernatorial and presidential elections
“People in Mississippi, we go to the same polling location for three years, and that fourth year, it changes,” said Jada Barnes, an organizer with the Jackson-based nonprofit MS Votes. “A lot of us are confused. When people are going to the polling place today, they’re seeing it is closed, so they’re just going back home which is making turnout go even lower.”
Barnes said she’s hearing this primarily from a few Jackson voters who called a hotline that MS Votes is manning. Lack of awareness around polling locations is a big deterrent, she said, because most people are trying to squeeze their vote in between work, school or family responsibilities.
“Maybe you’re on your lunch break, you only got 30 minutes to go vote, you learn that your polling location has changed and now you have to go back to work,” she said.
Norwood said he heard from a group of students assigned to vote at Christ Tabernacle who had attempted to vote at the wrong precinct and were told their names weren’t on the rolls. They didn’t know they had been moved from Ward 4 to Ward 6, Norwood said, meaning they expected to vote in a different council race until reaching the polls Tuesday.
Though voters have a duty to be informed of their polling location, Barnes said city and circuit clerks and local election commissioners are ultimately responsible for making sure voters know where to go on Election Day.
Angela Harris, the Jackson municipal clerk, said her office worked to inform voters by mailing out thousands of letters to Jacksonians whose precincts changed, including the roughly 6,000 whose wards changed during the 2024 redistricting.
“I am over-swamped,” she said yesterday.
Despite her efforts, at least one voter said he never got a letter. Stephen Brown learned through Facebook, not an official notice, that he was moved from Ward 1 to Ward 2.

A resident of the Briarwood Heights neighborhood in northeast Jackson, Brown’s efforts to vote Tuesday have been complicated by mixed messages and a lack of communication. He has yet to vote, even though he showed up at the polls at 7:10 this morning.
His odyssey took him to two wrong locations, where the poll managers instructed Brown to call his ward’s election commissioner, who did not answer multiple calls, Brown said. Brown finally learned through a Facebook comment that he could look up his new precinct on the Mississippi Secretary of State’s website — if he scrolled down the page past his county precinct information.
This afternoon, Brown has a series of meetings planned, so now he’s hoping for a 30-minute window to try voting one more time, even though he’s skeptical it will make a difference.
“I’m a very disenchanted voter, because I’ve been let down so much,” he said. “I vote because it’s the thing that I’m supposed to do and because of the sacrifices of my ancestors, but not because I truly believe in it, you know?”
Brown’s not alone in facing turbulence. Back at Christ Tabernacle, one Jackson voter, who declined to give her name, said she’s frustrated from having to drive to three polling locations in one day.
“I’m dissatisfied with the fact that I had to drive from one end of this street and all of the back to come over here when I usually vote over here on Highway 18,” she said. “This was a great inconvenience, gas wise and time wise.”
The same thing happened to Rodney Miller. He called the confusion some voters are facing in this election “unnecessary.”
“That ain’t the way we should be handling business,” he said. “We should be looking out for one another better than that, you know? It’s already enough getting people out to vote, and when you confuse them when they try? Come on now. That’s discouraging.”
Christ Tabernacle is the second largest precinct in the city in terms of registered voters, with 3,330 assigned to vote there as of 2024, according to documents retrieved from the municipal election committee. But it had one of the lowest voter turnout rates – 10% in the 2021 primary election before redistricting and before it became so large.
Byrd mentioned the much higher turnout in places like Ward 1 in northeast Jackson, compared to where he lives in south Jackson. Why does Byrd think this is?
“Civics,” Byrd said. “They took civics out of school. If you ask the average person what is the role and responsibility of any elected official, they can’t tell you.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
-
News from the South - Florida News Feed7 days ago
Family mourns death of 10-year-old Xavier Williams
-
News from the South - Alabama News Feed5 days ago
Severe storms will impact Alabama this weekend. Damaging winds, hail, and a tornado threat are al…
-
News from the South - Alabama News Feed5 days ago
University of Alabama student detained by ICE moved to Louisiana
-
News from the South - Louisiana News Feed6 days ago
Seafood testers find Shreveport restaurants deceiving customers with foreign shrimp
-
News from the South - Oklahoma News Feed3 days ago
Tornado watch, severe thunderstorm warnings issued for Oklahoma
-
News from the South - Oklahoma News Feed7 days ago
Why are Oklahomans smelling smoke Wednesday morning?
-
News from the South - West Virginia News Feed6 days ago
Roane County Schools installing security film on windows to protect students
-
News from the South - Florida News Feed6 days ago
Peanut farmer wants Florida water agency to swap forest land