Saturday, April 26, 2025
4/26/2025
Delta Region Maternal Care Coordination Program - Delta Health Center (DHC), the oldest rural health center in the nation, seeks to improve and expand access to and coordination of perinatal health care services for low-income women in a 12-county area in the Mississippi Delta, a “maternity desert” in which the health of pregnant and postpartum women and infants is deeply compromised. Each of these rural counties is a primary care Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA), where only a handful of obstetricians and certified professional midwives practice, and where certified nurse midwives—a potential solution to the shortage of perinatal care providers—are virtually non-existent. DHC thus qualifies for a funding preference for this application based on the HPSA scores of counties in the proposed service area. DHC also qualifies for a funding priority, insofar as two of the counties to be served have Maternity Care Target Area scores greater than 20 (Sunflower and Tallahatchie Counties). In 2024, Mississippi ranked worst in the nation on the State Scorecard on Women’s Health and Reproductive Care published by the Commonwealth Fund. In addition to having some of the highest rates of low-risk cesarean sections, low birthweight, and preterm birth, Mississippi has the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the country. Black women in Mississippi are almost twice as likely as White women to lose their infants in the first year of life (13.0 vs. 6.9 infant deaths per 1,000 births) and more than twice as likely White women to die from pregnancy-related causes (49.5 vs. 19.0/100,000 deaths per 100,000 live births). The goal of the proposed Mississippi Delta Maternal Care Coordination (MCC) project is to significantly decrease rates of late entry into prenatal care, low birthweight, and preterm birth in the Delta while also reducing Black-White disparities on these perinatal indicators. Objectives are: 1) no later than 9/29/25, implement a new model of perinatal care incorporating midwives and doulas into the care of pregnant and postpartum women accessing care at DHC; 2) no later than 9/30/26, devise and implement a consortium-wide system of healthcare services coordination before, during, and after pregnancy incorporating best practices for pregnancy risk assessment and care planning; and 3) No later than 6/30/27, implement a consortium-wide system for managing maternal hypertension. Grant funds will be used to integrate midwives and doulas into DHC’s family medicine practices at DHC’s 11 primary care access points, thereby enhancing and expanding access to perinatal care. Midwives will provide prenatal care, attend labor and delivery, and provide continuous education. Doulas will play a complementary role, providing physical, emotional, and educational support--but not medical or midwifery care—to pregnant and birthing women. They will also coordinate the services provided across the continuum of perinatal care. Both midwives and doulas will utilize the telehealth carts available at all DHC primary care clinics. Grant funds will also be used to support the participation of consortium organizations with the potential to “move the dial” on maternal health indicators within the DHC patient population and across the service area. These include DHC; twohospitals offering obstetrical care, including Northwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center and Delta Health Systems; and Converge, Inc., the state’s Title X grantee providing the full spectrum of family planning and preconception services statewide. The proposed hybrid implementation/effectiveness evaluation will used a mixed-methods approach to assessing the reach, effectiveness, and adoption of the consortium-wide MCC system, as well as implementation barriers and facilitators and end user satisfaction.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).