“Maternity deserts can be deadly” headlined a recent story in the McComb Enterprise Journal. The March of Dimes defines maternity care deserts as counties with no hospitals that provide obstetric care and no certified obstetric providers.

Unnecessary deaths are no surprise in a state where 42 of 82 counties qualify as maternity care deserts, which suffers from a critical shortage of maternity care providers, and which boasts the highest rates for infant and maternity mortality.

Two separate conferences held last month in Jackson focused on improving access to health care. The American Cancer Society partnered with non-profit Together for Hope at Duling Hall. Galloway Memorial United Methodist Church focused its annual T.W. Lewis Lecture Series on Jesus and a Just Society on “Access to Health Care: a Gospel Response.” At both events, key solutions identified to help reduce maternal care deserts included: 1) integrating midwives and their model of care into hospitals; and 2) training more physicians in obstetrics care.

Two medical professionals with Meridian connections are at the forefront of efforts to do just that.

Meridian native Janice Taleff Scaggs, D.N.P, leads an initiative to implement the midwife model of care at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC). Long-time Meridian physician Lee Valentine, D.O., helps lead an initiative to train family physicians in obstetrics care.

“Research shows that integrating midwifery care into a healthcare system improves maternal and neonatal outcomes and is a cost-effective safe option for maternal care,” explained Scaggs. Dr. J. Martin Tucker, chair of UMMC’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, brought Scaggs on board in 2020 to help integrate midwifery back into the system. “Having CNMs as team members and collaborators enhances patient care as well as student and resident education,” he told UMMC News Stories.

Dr. Valentine, a co-founder of the EC Health Net family medicine residency program in Meridian, and Dr. Melissa Stephens are designing a one-year fellowship program to qualify family physicians in prenatal, delivery, and postpartum care.

Valentine told Mississippi Today that most family physicians avoid delivering babies because of high costs for malpractice insurance. That cost falls considerably when physicians get obstetrics training and can prove competence to a malpractice insurer.

“Patients sometimes don’t get any (prenatal care) and they show up in the emergency room delivering,” Valentine told Mississippi Today. “That’s got to change.”

“UMMC is poised to provide an evidence-based intervention for improving maternal and neonatal outcomes in Mississippi that could be a model for the rest of the state,” Scaggs explained. As her program grows, Scaggs foresees UMMC expanding nurse-midwifery clinics to serve maternity care deserts – first in deserts near UMMC in Claiborne, Copiah, Simpson, and Yazoo Counties then later in other parts of the state.

Mississippi moms and babies need both initiatives to succeed.

Bill Crawford is a syndicated columnist from Jackson.