OurTupelo

Editor’s note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.

I now see why hospitals and rehab centers in Mississippi may be facing cuts. I started not to write this, but after spending the last month in the hospital and at a rehab center, I’ve been soul-searching in Jackson – the “City with Soul.”

For more than 39 years, I worked as a journalist. I covered everything from politics to education, Hurricane Katrina, a space shuttle disaster to George W. Bush’s State of the Union, but some of the most emotional stories I encountered were about healthcare.

Patients and families would complain about how they were treated in hospitals. Most television stations ignored those stories, and when administrators were pressed for answers, the fallback quote was always: “It’s HIPAA. We can’t discuss it.”

That response hides the truth. Yes, under federal law you can’t disclose private patient information. But you can – and should – comment on your policies and procedures. And when those policies fail patients, the public has a right to know.

When I landed in the hospital, I thought I knew what to expect. I ran to the “crosses” for obvious reasons. But what I found shocked me. I’ll be blunt: I would never go back, and I wouldn’t even take a stray or even a dead dog there in an emergency. At least he/she wouldn’t suffer.

My neurologist at the time (excluding the nurse practitioner in the office), cardiologist and attending physician were excellent. They cared. They listened. But the majority of nurses, CNAs and staff on my floor? They need either retraining, removal or termination. People enter a hospital because they are sick. They aren’t asking for spa treatment or red-carpet service. They just want to be treated with basic human dignity.

Here’s one degrading example. Patients are told: “Call for assistance if you need to go to the restroom. We don’t want you to fall.” Fair enough.

But when I pressed the call button, no one came. Not for 15 minutes. So I dragged myself to the restroom, dragged myself to the sink to wash my hands and dragged myself back to bed with IV in tow. Someone finally arrived five minutes later, only after another desperate call. Their excuse? “No one told me.”

Think about that. No one told me. What kind of communication system leaves sick patients unattended when they have to go to the restroom.

And why is the secretary — the one supposed to relay those calls — shielded from accountability? Not to protect her, but to protect a broken system that covers itself at the expense of patients.

Too often, I saw staff huddled in corners gossiping, scrolling through their phones or simply ignoring the patients they were supposed to be serving.

Managers were no better. When I reported mistreatment, one told me: “Glad it wasn’t one of mine. We were short-staffed and had to borrow from another floor.” Excuse me? Aren’t all nurses trained to care for patients? Isn’t compassion supposed to be universal? If that’s your excuse, then the system is beyond pathetic.

And then came the rehab nightmare. For days I asked when I would be transferred. The answer was always the same: “We’re waiting on a response.” Finally, I called the rehab center myself. They told me they had never received the paperwork. The next day, I learned my paperwork hadn’t been sent until 10 p.m. –  days after my initial request.

In other words, I was lied to. Lied to while my health and recovery hung in the balance. And here’s the kicker: the moment I told my doctor what was happening, my transfer was suddenly approved. So the paperwork was never the problem. Honesty was.

This is not just about one hospital. It’s about a system that has lost its soul. A system that views patients as burdens, not people. A system where excuses and cover-ups are more common than compassion and competence.

Mississippi is already near the bottom of national health rankings. Our hospitals are underfunded, our nurses underpaid and our patients overlooked. But none of that excuses treating people with indifference, dishonesty or outright neglect.

Cuts may be coming. Closures may follow. But if hospitals continue operating as they do now, maybe they’ve earned it. Because a hospital without dignity is no hospital at all.

Patients in Mississippi deserve better. We deserve hospitals where care is more than a slogan, where dignity isn’t optional and where honesty is the standard. Until that happens, Mississippi’s “City with Soul” will remain a city without one.

Note: This is not meant to indict every hospital, health system or experience. But it was mine. We need more patient advocates. In the meantime, I chose to be my own advocate. If patients don’t speak up, no one will know the system must change. When lives and dignity are at stake, it’s always the right time to get into “good trouble.”

Bio: Katina Rankin, a Magee native, is an award winning journalist and founder of Katina’s Klassroom, a non-profit that strives “to improve reading skills and eliminate food insecurity in underserved areas.” She also is the author of multiple books, including “Up North, Down South: City Folk Meet Country Folk,”  “Kendall’s Kitchen: Healthy and Hearty Recipes for Kids,”  “Emmett Till: Sometimes Good Can Come Out Of A Bad Situation” and others.

Funding for federal programs administered by the state Health Department could dry up and employees could be furloughed, says a memo sent to department employees and obtained by Mississippi Today. 

While the department told the news outlet no furloughs had been made yet, the memo circulated as an unspecified number of state Health Department contract employees were ordered to stop working this week because of a federal government shutdown.

The agency’s dependence on federal funds forced it to issue “stop-work orders” to contract employees across the agency, Health Department spokesperson Greg Flynn said. The employees were told to halt this week as their pay period ended, and were notified their jobs and compensation would pause until the shutdown ended.

Dr. Dan Edney, the state health officer, sent a department-wide memo Wednesday after the federal government shut down. Congress remains at loggerheads over government funding legislation, as Republicans and Democrats dig in for a prolonged fight. President Donald Trump has readied plans to unleash layoffs and cuts across the federal government. 

Edney’s memo said federally funded programs could experience delays in reimbursement, grant drawdowns or new obligations. The Health Department receives 80% of its funding from the federal government, with that money impacting a wide range of programs. 

One such program is the Women, Infants and Children’s Nutrition Program, a supplemental food program for new moms and young children. That program and other essential services will continue for “as long as possible,” the memo said. It is unclear whether the department will need to make additional cuts to free funds to maintain these programs. 

Edney said in the memo Wednesday that the department might issue furloughs — temporary, unpaid leave — if the shutdown drags on. 

Flynn told Mississippi Today there is a plan in place specifying which employees will be the first to be furloughed, but the plan hasn’t been implemented.

“Whether they become necessary depends on the federal government’s funding decisions in the coming days,” Edney wrote in his memo. “We are reviewing all available funding sources and will notify any impacted employees directly if furloughs are required.”

In addition to potential furloughs related to the government shutdown, the Health Department has already fired employees this week.

On Thursday, Mississippi Today reported that the Health Department fired at least 10 people from jobs dealing with preventive health and elimination of health disparities. A department spokesperson said “personnel adjustments” were made in response to “uncertainty around federal funding.” 

A person outside the department who was briefed on the firings and spoke to Mississippi Today under condition of anonymity to discuss internal agency decisions said those layoffs were partially in response to issues outlined in a report published by the State Auditor Shad White. The report alleged the Health Department failed to properly monitor taxpayer funds directed to the Office of Preventive Health and Health Equity.

U.S. senators were headed back to the Capitol on Friday for another vote on government funding, but there has been no sign of any real progress toward ending their standoff. Democrats are demanding that Congress extend health care benefits, while Republicans are trying to wear them down with day-after-day voting on a House-passed bill that would reopen the government temporarily, mostly at current spending levels.

The main point of contention between parties is the expiration of Biden-era subsidies that are making health insurance more affordable for millions of Americans. If they are not renewed, premiums on marketplace insurance plans will more than double next year, KFF estimates. 

Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia has been vocal on social media about the cost increases for his constituents. In one of his posts, he said the monthly cost for a family of four insured by Anthem would rise from $559 in 2025 to $2,131 in 2026. 

Mississippi’s Republican senators, Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith, have blamed the shutdown on Democrats and said it would damage the country’s national security interests. Senate Republican leadership has balked at renewing the health care subsidies with the government funding legislation, saying it should be considered in a separate measure, if at all.

In an unprecedented move, the Trump administration has used government websites to pin blame on Democrats. A banner across the website of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development says: “The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government. HUD will use available resources to help Americans in need.” 

In his memo, Edney said the Health Department would work to protect staff members and the work they do. 

“We understand that this uncertainty is difficult,” Edney wrote. “This is not the first time a federal shutdown has affected our agency, and we are committed to managing the situation with as little disruption as possible.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Mississippi Today is thrilled to announce Laura Santhanam as its new health editor.

Santhanam is a Mississippi native who has spent the last 11 years of her career working as a health reporter and producer at PBS News. She is a former Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan and was part of the team that won the Peabody Award in 2023 for “War in the Holy Land,” a special report documenting the Hamas attack on Israel and the aftermath. 

“I am thankful and thrilled for the opportunity to contribute to a newsroom that has done so much work to hold people in power accountable and to serve my home state,” Santhanam said. “This moment demands fearless journalism, and I cannot imagine a place more ready to deliver on that need than Mississippi Today.” 

Santhanam has covered health stories across four presidential administrations, including the overdose crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic and reproductive health care. As a fellow for the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center for Health Journalism, she mentored journalists from across the country as they completed long-term investigations.

“We are so excited to gain the perspective of someone who not only has an impressive career in health journalism, but also an intimate knowledge of the state and its strengths and shortcomings,” said Kate Royals, managing editor of Mississippi Today. “Laura will undoubtedly strengthen our newsroom’s health coverage and be an amazing resource for the state as a whole.”

Mississippi Today’s award-winning health team was created in 2022 and is made up of three reporters and an editor. The team has covered stories including HIV prevention among minority groups, the state’s high rates of low-risk C-sections and state and local governments’ spending of opioid settlement funds. 

Cliff Johnson, a University of Mississippi law school professor, announced on Thursday that he will run as a Democrat for Mississippi’s 1st Congressional District seat in next year against Republican incumbent Trent Kelly. 

Johnson, in a campaign announcement video, said that if elected to the seat serving northeastern Mississippi, he would work to expand access to affordable healthcare, protect Social Security benefits, and preserve the state’s land and water resources. 

READ MORE: Field grows in Mississippi’s 2026 US Senate Race. Here are the candidates so far

“As Mississippians, we were taught that we are measured by how we treat those around us who are struggling and need help,” Johnson said. “But in Washington, too many career politicians have forgotten those values and callously bury Mississippi families under a heaping pile of oppressive policies that make life harder rather than easier.” 

Kelly is likely to win the Republican nomination, but he could have a primary opponent.

A spokesperson for Kelly did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Johnson’s campaign announcement. 

Former state Rep. Kelvin Buck, a Democrat who represented Marshall County, has also qualified to run for the congressional seat.

So far, no Republican has filed paperwork to run against Kelly.

Johnson’s announcement follows several other candidates who have announced that they’re running for Congress in the 2026 midterm election. 

Here is a list of other candidates who have announced they’re running: 

2nd Congressional District 

• Bennie Thompson, incumbent Democrat 

• Bennie Foster, Democrat

3rd Congressional District 

• Michael Guest, incumbent Republican 

• Michael Chiaradio, Democrat

4th Congressional District

• Mike Ezell, incumbent Republican 
• Paul James Blackman, Democrat 
• Sawyer Walters, Republican 

U.S. Senate: 

Mississippi’s Health Department fired employees working on preventive health and health equity issues, people familiar with the personnel decision told Mississippi Today. 

An employee who was terminated Wednesday spoke to Mississippi Today on condition of anonymity because of concerns about repercussions in future job searches. The former employee said they were one of about 10 people laid off from jobs dealing with preventive health and elimination of health disparities. 

The Health Department downsized what it had called the “Office of Preventive Health and Health Equity” partially in response to issues outlined in a Sept. 22 report published by the Office of State Auditor Shad White, according to a person outside the department who was briefed on the firings and spoke to Mississippi Today under condition of anonymity to discuss internal agency decisions. The report alleged the Health Department failed to properly monitor taxpayer funds directed to the Office of Preventive Health and Health Equity.

Greg Flynn, spokesperson for the state Health Department, confirmed the department made staffing “adjustments” but would not say how many employees were laid off or in which offices. He declined to comment on the auditor’s report but said programs and outreach around preventive health and health disparities continue to exist.

“With uncertainty around federal funding, we’ve made personnel adjustments to protect essential direct services and keep the focus on the health of Mississippi families,” Flynn said. “Our priority is ensuring stability and continuity for the communities we serve.”

The former Health Department employee who spoke to Mississippi Today said they did not receive a direct response when they asked whether the layoffs were caused by the federal government shutdown that began on Wednesday, hours before the employee was terminated. Rather, the person was told that as a state employee without civil service protection, they could be dismissed without cause. 

The Office of Preventive Health and Health Equity worked on programs dealing with chronic disease prevention and healthy living, according to an April 2024 social media post published by the Health Department. 

“Our Health Equity Office ensures fair healthcare access for all,” the post said. “Together, we’re building a healthier, more equitable MS!” 

Financial documents from the Health Department make reference to an Office of Preventive Health and Health Equity, but there is no mention of such an office on the Department’s Preventive Health page or Health Disparities Office page. 

The auditor’s report said the Office of Preventive Health and Health Equity failed to properly monitor some taxpayer funds awarded to nonprofits through subgrants. Thousands of dollars were spent on gift cards, grocery cards and gym memberships with “little documentation about who benefited,” the report said. 

A Ridgeland-based nonprofit was awarded over $250,000 by the Office of Preventive Health and Health Equity through a two-year grant to be used for disease prevention for “underserved Mississippians.” The Health Department often reimbursed the nonprofit without proper documentation to prove the expenditures were appropriate, the report said. 

In a statement to Mississippi Today, White said the Auditor’s Office found state agencies have been giving tax dollars to groups with little accountability for how the money is spent. 

“So it’s no surprise to us that agencies are starting to make some changes now that our reports have been made public and taxpayers are starting to ask more questions about how their money is spent,” White said. 

This isn’t the first time the Health Department has come under fire by the Auditor’s Office for work it outsourced to nonprofits. 

In May, the Auditor’s Office said the Health Department failed to adequately oversee how nonprofits were using federal funds to address HIV prevention. The Auditor’s Office found that only 35 HIV tests were administered between 2021 and 2024, while the nonprofits received reimbursements for alcohol, late-night rideshares, purchases from a smoke shop and rental of a nightclub owned by one group’s executive director. 

The Health Department said the lapses were “unacceptable” and did not “reflect the value of many nonprofit partners we continue to work with across Mississippi.”

Even before White’s September report criticizing the Office of Preventive Health and Health Equity, President Donald Trump and Republicans around the country have criticized programs the word “equity” in their names. 

The programs have been said to violate federal and state regulations banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs.  

Mississippi has some of the highest rates of preventable diseases such as obesity, diabetes and hypertension, all of which are more common in Black residents in the state. These conditions contribute to maternal and infant mortality, in which Mississippi also leads the nation.

Update 10/2/2025: This story has been updated to add information about Mississippi’s health disparties.

Mississippi’s unemployment rate has changed little this year, while the state’s gross domestic product dipped slightly in the second quarter, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

August’s unemployment rate was 3.9% and has fluctuated between 4.0% and 3.9% since March. This follows a national trend of what economists are calling a “no-hire, no-fire” labor market. 

The number of job openings and the number of hires in Mississippi didn’t change much in July. There were 10,000 less separations — employees who left voluntarily, were laid off or fired — month to month. 

Gov. Tate Reeves celebrated the state’s record high for total non-farm employment at 1,205,500. This was up by 16,200 compared with August 2024. In the announcement, Reeves called it “another great day for our state.” 

Mississippi’s labor force participation rate dropped slightly in August to 55.9%. It reached over 56% in February 2025, the first time it has reached that peak since before the COVID-19 pandemic. Mississippi’s labor force participation rate has historically been at or near the lowest in the nation, and is lower than the national rate, which was 62.3% in August.

Mississippi was one of two states where real GDP decreased in the second quarter of 2025. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, real GDP declined by 0.9%. Agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting were the largest contributors to this change.

Economic numbers only tell a part of the story. I’d love to hear about how you believe the economy is doing. How easy is it for people to find a job, are you planning on staying at a job you were planning on leaving? Email me at  marketplace@mississippitoday.org.

New SUV to be built at Nissan’s Canton Plant

Nissan announced it will be building the Xterra SUV in Mississippi in 2028.

Earlier this year it announced production delays for two electric SUVs. The hybrid-powered Xterra had been discontinued in the U.S. a decade ago. Nissan and other auto makers are shifting away from fully electric autos. This follows a slowdown in electric vehicle demand and the end of federal EV tax credits.

Nissan was the first car manufacturer in Mississippi. The Canton plant opened in 2003. The Nissan plant has been described as “the cornerstone of Mississippi’s automotive industry” and is credited with attracting other car manufacturers and suppliers to the state.

Other News

• “I’m excited for the opportunities for some of these companies to come in and be able to employ people in our area,” one resident told the Roy Howard Community Journalism Center about the construction of a new technology park in Pearl River County. 
• Jabil, a manufacturing solutions provider, is investing $70 million in a new X-ray sterilization facility for medical devices in Marshall County. The investment will be spread out over three years and promises to create 24 jobs.
• President Donald Trump recently announced a new $100,000 fee for new H-1B applications. The visa allows U.S. employers to hire foreign workers in “speciality occupations,” such as engineering and medicine. Mississippi had 261 visa approvals in Fiscal Year 2025 according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. This encompassed new visas, renewals and transfers. The University of Mississippi had 22 new employment visa approvals, the highest for any employer. It was followed by the University of Mississippi Medical Center with 16.
• Entergy Mississippi announced it’s investing $300 million to upgrade its power grid. This is the biggest grid upgrade in the history of the state’s largest utility company. Entergy Mississippi’s CEO promised that this investment would not impact customers’ bills.

READ MORE: Entergy Mississippi CEO Fisackerly answers questions on data centers and electricity rates

Ole Miss and Southern Miss are off this weekend and Mississippi State is on the road, but the Sanderson Farms Championship, Mississippi’s only PGA Tour tournament returns to the Country Club of Jackson. Today’s discussion includes golf – both a Ryder Cup review and a Sanderson Farms preview – and a Mississippi college football season that keeps getting more interesting.

Stream all episodes here.

Mississippi Today launched a major update to our website Wednesday night – the first redesign since 2021. In this revamp, we aimed to make the site a fitting showcase for the excellent work our journalists do every day to serve Mississippians while making it easier for you, our readers, to find the news that matters to you in the form you want to consume it.

Above all, we aimed to create a cleaner, less distracting reader experience by reducing unnecessary visual clutter, removing many of the advertisements on story pages and ensuring our reporting reads well on any device. We also made a number of technical improvements for faster load time on slower connections and mobile devices.

The navigation at the top and bottom of the site was also completely reworked to make it easier to directly access stories by topic. You’ll also notice more opportunities throughout the site to explore these topics more deeply, including related stories at the end of story pages, blocks to help you navigate between stories in larger projects and series, and more robust content tagging to help you find more stories on the topics that matter to you most.

We’ve elevated the links where you can find more information about Mississippi Today, how we’re funded and how to get in touch with us. We’ve also added more biographical information about all of our journalists that you can access by clicking on their bylines or by using the “read more” links at the end of stories. We’re proud to say many of our journalists were born and raised in Mississippi and are deeply connected to the communities they serve. We’re equally proud of the work they’ve done, the impact they’ve had and the recognition they’ve received in the form of regional and national journalism awards. This work is now more fully showcased on each of their bio pages.

We know many readers are now consuming our content on video platforms, so we’ve added new ways to feature video content directly on our homepage. As we grow our multimedia team, you can expect to find more video explainers, analysis and direct connection with our journalists through video throughout the site.  

We hope you love the changes, and we also value your feedback. If you have any feedback – good or bad – or questions about the new design, please get in touch by filling out this form. We’d love to hear from you.

Finally, this work would not happen without the contributions of our member community. If you already support us, thank you for making all of these improvements possible. If you value this work and have the means to do so, we hope you’ll become a member or consider making an additional contribution so we can continue making improvements to better serve you.

City and county officials across Mississippi have taken new steps to address addiction with opioid settlement money in the wake of Mississippi Today’s investigation into how these funds have been managed and spent. 

The newsroom found in September that of the $15.5 million of money nearly 150 local governments had received since 2022 from companies that contributed to thousands of Mississippi overdose deaths, elected leaders used less than $1 million to prevent the crisis from proliferating. That roughly $945,000 was the only part of Mississippi’s total settlement share, over $124 million as of this summer, used to address addiction.

Soon after the investigation was published, Jackson City Council member Kevin Parkinson shared at a late September council meeting how the devastating effects of a deadly overdose can permanently scar any family, including his own. 

A few days later, years after Jackson received its first check from lawsuits intended to prevent more drug deaths, Parkinson told Mississippi Today he wants the city to use that money to curb an addiction public health crisis that has claimed the lives of thousands of Mississippians. 

The city had received over $500,000 since 2022 from drug companies that contributed to the decades-long opioid crisis. Jackson, so far, has spent that money on routine general expenses such as construction — a common trend among the 147 local governments in the state receiving settlement shares, according to the investigation. 

Parkinson, who was elected in June, said he didn’t know what the city had spent its money on until the newsroom’s investigation, and it was disappointing to learn about the dollars funding efforts such as moving city offices. 

He said his 32-year-old sister died of an overdose in 2023. She entered addiction treatment but relapsed a number of times, and Parkinson remembers when he and his parents would drive through the Chicago suburbs searching for any sign of her, hoping she was still alive.

Parkinson said he doesn’t see government bodies as the biggest victims in the epidemic, despite the fact Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office has allowed Mississippi local governments to use tens of millions of opioid settlement dollars for any public purpose. 

“Families really, really paid the ultimate price,” he said.

Parkinson said he wants to explore ways for Jackson residents with expertise about the epidemic to share ideas for the money’s best uses — whether that’s through a public hearing or a community-led task force. 

Mayor John Horhn, who took office July 1, said in September that he wants to see Jackson’s opioid settlement money spent primarily on violence prevention in the future. In the same speech, he said anything Mississippi governments can do to prevent fentanyl overdoses is a good thing. 

Nic Lott, Horhn’s spokesperson, did not respond to an email that asked what steps the mayor wanted to take to address the addiction crisis and if Horhn would support a public hearing related to Jackson’s settlement dollars.  

Parkinson said Jackson needs to address important problems, including violence, but spending this money on addiction prevention, treatment and recovery could save lives. He said it would’ve been helpful for Fitch to restrict the funds for only those efforts.  

“This is a case where I would have appreciated more handcuffs,” he said. 

Officials representing four other Mississippi cities and counties, stretching from the Tennessee border to the southern end of the Pearl River, also confirmed they’ve recently taken steps to start spending the settlement money they control to prevent more deadly overdoses.

Officials in Lowndes County plan to send future settlement dollars of up to $50,000 over the next 12 months to Community Counseling Services, the region’s community mental health center, said county administrator James Fisher. Previously, the supervisors had directed over $140,000 for general services. 

“Counties are not really equipped to turn funds like that into something meaningful,” Fisher said. “We just decided that they would be better to use the funds than what we were using them for.”

Keenyn Wald, Community Counseling Service’s clinical and operations director, said the center lost state grant funding last spring that it used for its addiction treatment services. Before the cuts, one of those programs helped over a dozen people a month  receive treatment while they continued to work.

“Then that decreased pretty dramatically because the funding just stopped,” he said.

While Lowndes County opioid settlement money won’t fully make up that shortfall, Wald said, it will help the program scale up again. 

The Yazoo County Board of Supervisors recently agreed to use the dollars it controls to try to prevent more overdoses in the community if it wins additional funds from the state Legislature’s settlement share, according to the Yazoo Herald. The Legislature and the Mississippi Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council oversee most of the state’s money from the lawsuits, and they’re expected to start distributing that for opioid-related projects next year.

If lawmakers and the council approve Yazoo’s grant, the supervisors said they would combine those dollars with the money sent directly to them to hire two social workers to lead county overdose prevention efforts for four years. They’re calling the program Yazoo Health, Education, Access, Leadership and Sustainability — or Yazoo HEALS. 

Supervisors had previously placed around $74,000 of settlement money in the county’s general fund.

“We received the money but really had no plan on how to use the funding for opioid addiction,”  said David Peyton, one of the supervisors. 

He said if the HEALS plan moves forward, the county’s future settlement checks would also go to this fund. Now that the supervisors and county lobbyist Sam Martin have developed a plan, Peyton said it’s easier to see how the local dollars can prevent deaths. 

“If we can help people that have that addiction to find ways to stop using opioids in this way, then we’re really helping the community as a whole, one person at a time,” Peyton said. 

Near the state’s northern border, Hernando Mayor Chip Johnson successfully lobbied the city’s aldermen in September to split future opioid settlement dollars between DeSoto County emergency mental health services and a local program to divert people charged with low-level drug crimes away from law enforcement and toward addiction treatment. 

In June, Johnson wrote to Mississippi Today that the city was using its $73,000 from the opioid settlement to offset the cost of an ambulance. He recently said he still believes that will prevent more drug deaths but hopes  spending money more directly on overdose prevention will go further toward that goal.

Johnson said he would recommend that other Mississippi mayors follow his example in spending settlement money for mental health. 

“It’s a long-term solution that is going to work for your city,” he said.

Pearl River County could use its more than $500,000 of unspent opioid settlement money to address addiction but is still figuring out the best way, according to County Administrator Adrain Lumpkin. 

He said local addiction treatment nonprofits also applied for opioid settlement grants from the state, which the advisory committee will prioritize if the applicants provide matching funds. If the nonprofits end up winning grants, the county wants to use opioid settlement dollars for those matching funds.

Lumpkin said Pearl River County officials are exploring a school program to dissuade kids from using opioids. They know prevention saves lives and money, but they don’t know the best ways to create that curriculum. 

Other states’ governments have provided guides for cities and counties on how to determine a community’s addiction response needs, develop projects to address those needs and combine resources with other nearby governments. Fitch and the Mississippi Legislature haven’t done that, and Lumpkin said it’s been hard to know how to implement Pearl River County’s prevention ambitions. 

“My degree is in accounting. It’s not in social work,” Lumpkin said. “We’re going to have to invent a wheel, because we’re not getting it. It’s not passed down.” 

As she handed out free doses of the opioid overdose-reversing drug naloxone in Jackson on the city’s “Save a Life Day,” Brittany Denson stressed the life-saving potential of the settlement dollars. She’s in long-term opioid addiction recovery, and she uses her experience to help others at the Hinds County sober living home Grace House who arestruggling with the disease. 

The recovery residence only serves women, and she said there’s no equivalent nonprofit men’s setup in the area. That’s one of many overdose prevention resource gaps she sees in central Mississippi. 

She said public input opportunities, like the ones Parkinson is pondering, are crucial for spending settlement money responsibly. 

“It gets real dangerous when people of authority, who don’t understand lived experience, start changing the terms of what recovery looks like and kind of shun people who have that lived experience out of those things.”

The Democratic National Committee says it will spend a “low six-figure” amount to help Democratic candidates in seven special legislative elections in Mississippi in November. 

DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement to Mississippi Today that building long-term infrastructure in the South is a top priority for him, which is why the committee is investing in Mississippi during an off-year election cycle. 

“With this major investment, the DNC is turbocharging Mississippi Democrats’ organizing efforts to win crucial legislative races this November and continue us on the road to a blue Mississippi,” Martin said. 

The committee did not say exactly how much it was spending on the Mississippi races.

Republicans have supermajority control of both chambers of the 174-member Mississippi Legislature.

The DNC’s investment will go directly to the Mississippi Democratic Party, according to a news release. The state party is expected to use the funds to support on-the-ground organizing efforts, boost paid advertising and build infrastructure. 

Mississippi is conducting special elections this year because a federal three-judge panel recently ruled that the Legislature diluted Black voting strength when it redrew legislative districts in 2022.

Of the 14 seats lawmakers redrew, seven have a contested general election where a Democratic nominee is competing against a Republican nominee. The general election will take place on Nov. 4, and the deadline for voters to register in time to vote in the election is Oct. 6.