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The closure of a neonatal intensive care unit in South Jackson will hurt the mothers and babies who need it most, say doctors and nurses who care for the patients in this majority Black, low-income area. 

Dr. Samuel Brown, an OB/GYN at Merit Health Central, sees many patients with conditions that increase their risk of delivering early, like diabetes and high blood pressure. The vast majority of his patients are Black, and Black women in Mississippi are about 50% more likely than white women to deliver prematurely – the most common reason a baby is admitted to the NICU. 

With a NICU at Merit Health Central, Brown’s patients who go into labor early and those with other complications could deliver at the hospital close to home and recover while their baby received care at the same facility. 

But last month, Merit Health announced it was closing the NICU at Merit Central. Now, women who go into labor before 35 weeks of pregnancy aren’t supposed to deliver at Merit Central unless it’s an emergency and they can’t be safely transferred. If a baby born at Merit Central requires NICU care, they are “shipped off” to Merit River Oaks or Woman’s Hospital, both located in Flowood, said Laketa Johnson, who works with Brown as a nurse manager.

Since the NICU closed at Merit Central, 10 babies have been transferred to other facilities, according to Merit. Only four babies were transferred in 2022 before the NICU closed.

“This community is the community that needs doctors … because of obesity and preterm labor, diabetes, hypertension, all that stuff affects pregnancy,” Brown said. “And those are the patients that are going to need high-risk doctors or the NICU. And the fact is, that the NICU is gone. It’s just not a good thing for this community.”

The demographics of Flowood are different from those of the community surrounding Merit Central: The zip code that includes Merit Central is 93% Black, with 31% of residents in poverty and a median income of $29,600. The zip code that includes the two Merit hospitals in Flowood is 30% Black, with 20% of residents below the poverty line and a median household income of $69,000.

Black women and babies in Mississippi suffer the worst of the state’s abysmal maternal and infant health outcomes. Black women are about 2.5 times likelier to die of a pregnancy-related complication than white women. Black babies are more likely to be born early and to have a low birth weight. And they are twice as likely to die before their first birthday as white babies. 

Alicia Carpenter, director of marketing at Merit Health, said the closure of the NICU at Merit Central was part of an effort to reduce duplication of services across their network. She said doctors help patients decide where to deliver based on their needs and health history. 

“We will work with OB providers for patients who are less than 35 weeks to understand what is best for both the mother and baby at time of presentation and post-delivery,” she said in an emailed statement to Mississippi Today. “If an expectant mother presented in labor and could not be safely transferred to a higher level of care prior to delivery, Merit Health Central is prepared to safely deliver the mother and stabilize the baby for transfer to one of our sister hospitals that has NICU services or to one of the three hospitals in the neighboring Jackson area that offer NICU services.”

The closure of the NICU is part of a broader reduction in services at Merit Central, which is owned by Hinds County but leased and operated by the Nashville-based company Community Health Systems. The company reported a $326 million net loss in the second quarter of 2022. 

Closures have included the hospital’s burn unit, the only such facility in the state, and its operating room. Anyone admitted to the emergency room who needs surgery will be transferred after being stabilized. Cardiovascular and endoscopy services have been moved to the suburbs, too. 

Of the company’s nine facilities in Mississippi, Merit Central spends the largest amount by far providing care for patients without insurance, who in most cases have no ability to pay, meaning the hospital must absorb the costs. That figure was $16 million in the most recent fiscal year. 

Merit has said labor and delivery services, including cesarean sections, will continue at Merit Central. But while Brown and his colleagues continue to see obstetrics patients and deliver babies at the hospital, the closure of the NICU disrupts care for many of their patients.

Dr. Edith Smith Rayford, an OB/GYN at the community health center Central Mississippi Health Services, Inc., has delivered babies at the hospital since 1996. She served as chief of the OB/GYN section and chief of women’s health and has seen the hospital change owners several times. 

“I really, really had the vision that the hospital would remain a beacon for the community,” she said. “But I think that maybe I was wrong there.”

Roughly 700 to 750 babies were born each year at Merit Central from 2019 to 2021, according to statistics provided by the health department. 

Carpenter said that 72 babies were admitted to the NICU at Merit Central in 2021, about 10% of all babies born there. At River Oaks, 172 babies spent time in the NICU, a similar share of all births. 

The NICU at River Oaks can accommodate 20 babies, while the facility at Woman’s Hospital can take 16, Carpenter said. 

At the NICU, newborns get around-the-clock care from experts, with careful monitoring of their vital signs and temperature. Babies can stay for a few hours or for as long as months. 

Rayford said that routine deliveries haven’t changed at Merit Central. But now, for more complicated situations, she doesn’t have the support she would like. And moms who deliver prematurely at Merit Central will likely be separated from their newborns. 

“Already a bond is being broken,” she said. “Mom is in one facility, the baby in another. A newborn at that. I’m just not comfortable with that.”

Brown has one patient whose water broke at 32 weeks who has been admitted to River Oaks. Before the NICU closed, she could have been at Merit Central, where Brown sees his patients regularly and would be able to check in on her easily between other appointments. 

“This is the type of patient that I need here,” Brown said. “She can deliver any time.” 

Since the NICU closed, Brown has had patients who delivered at Merit Central only to have their babies sent to River Oaks. 

Johnson, the nurse manager, recalls patients’ reactions to learning their babies would be taken to another hospital across town. 

“They cried,” she said. 

The post ‘They cried’: Black families harmed by South Jackson NICU closure, doctors warn appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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Joe Paul will serve as the next president of the University of Southern Mississippi, the Institutions of Higher Learning announced in a press release Monday. The Board of Trustees took the vote last week during executive session at a monthly board meeting that was held in Oxford instead of Jackson, where the board traditionally meets. 

The swift decision – announced less than a month after trustees conducted listening sessions at USM’s campuses in Hattiesburg and Gulf Park – comes on the heels of criticism from rank-and-file faculty and staff about the lack of transparency in IHL’s presidential search process. It also follows weeks of national scrutiny toward USM for its involvement in Mississippi’s welfare scandal. 

IHL contracted a headhunting firm, Academic Search, for $130,000 to aid in a presidential search that was scheduled to end in spring 2023, according to the contract inked on Sept. 21. Academic Search was hired to help the board select semi-finalists, conduct reference checks and provide guidance on conditions of employment for the next president. 

IHL brought Paul out of retirement to serve as interim president at USM following the departure of Rodney Bennett, the university’s tenth president and the first African American to fill the role, earlier this year. A longtime administrator, Paul is well-known at USM, having served as vice president for student affairs, faculty in the College of Education and Psychology, and as a fundraiser for the USM Foundation. 

Paul will initially serve as president for the next four years, according to his statement in IHL’s press release. IHL did not include his salary in the press release. 

“I want to assure all that I will attack these next four years with the energy and urgency with which I have approached these first four months,” Paul said. “We will chase audacious goals with passion and persistence. Our Southern Miss grit will prevail.”

Tom Duff and Gee Ogletree, IHL board members and USM alumni who co-chaired the presidential search, both cited the community’s feedback at the listening sessions and in an online comment form as a factor in the decision, per IHL’s press release. 

At a listening session that Mississippi Today attended in Hattiesburg, multiple people said they wanted Paul or someone like him to serve as president, including Chuck Scianna, a high-dollar donor to USM; Toby Barker, the mayor of Hattiesburg; and Denis Wiesenburg, the president of the faculty senate. 

In his statement, Ogletree also noted his personal experience with Paul. 

“I have known and witnessed Dr. Paul’s exceptional contributions to the University for over four decades,” Ogletree said. “I recognize Dr. Paul’s energy, relationships, affection and years of service to Southern Miss have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is the right person to guide the University into its next chapter of leadership and excellence in teaching, service and research in the state and nation.”

In turn, Paul said in the press release that he was honored to accept the position and grateful to Ogletree and Duff. 

“These two Southern Miss alumni have displayed courage, conviction and integrity through this process,” Paul said. “They love Southern Miss as I do, and they share a vision of the potential this institution has to positively impact our region, state and beyond.”

Paul is the first president that IHL has hired since the board earlier this year approved a series of changes to make its executive search process more confidential. In April, the board voted to make it so search committee members are anonymous, even to each other, and to decrease the role that campus advisory groups play in selecting the president. 

In a special-called meeting at the end of September, trustees voted to roll back the change that made the committee confidential so they could announce members at the listening sessions on Oct. 3 and Oct. 4. 

But the changes that reduced the advisory group’s role in the process remained. Members of the committee – which was stacked with politically connected alumni, major donors and high-level administrators – were not allowed to know the names of potential candidates. The committee did not include any rank-and-file faculty or staff. 

Faculty and staff hope that Paul will approach the role of president in a collaborative manner, a desire that Paul nodded to in the press release. 

“I am also deeply committed to creating an unapparelled (sic) student life and leadership experience,” he said. “A spirit of shared governance will be front and center for me.” 

A formal announcement will be held on Thursday, Oct. 27 at 3 p.m. in the Thad Cochran Center Ballroom in Hattiesburg.

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Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba cautioned at a Monday press conference that capital city residents should be conscious of their water consumption as another large flock of visitors is expected at Jackson State University’s football game this coming weekend.

Lumumba said there was an increased demand for water this last weekend as people travelled into the city for JSU’s homecoming game. The extra consumption put pressure on the city’s water distribution system, the mayor said, which was dealing with water line leaks. On Saturday, the city issued a boil water notice for 380 connections in southwest Jackson.

The mayor called it a “very difficult weekend” for the water system, and even warned residents of the potential for a citywide boil water notice if there’s too much demand on the already fragile treatment plants.

“I want to provide this warning: we’re expecting a large number of people to come in this weekend as well as Jackson State prepares for its rivalry game with Southern University,” Lumumba said. “We’re asking that people be cognizant, that people be considerate over their consumption. Don’t use more than what you need to use, as increased demand and the pressure on our water treatment facilities could actually cause challenges with our water pressure, and if the water pressure drops significantly enough then we might find ourselves in a citywide boil water notice again.”

As the extra consumption put pressure on the surface water delivery system, which serves most residents, well system customers also saw interruptions after a motor pump failure by Highway 18. Lumumba said the city made an emergency purchase for a new pump with the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval, and that the city slowly restored water pressure over the weekend.

The mayor also discussed new funding opportunities for the water system, some that have already been allocated and some that the city is applying for:

• $5 million the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers provided through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
• $20 million from Congress’ continuing resolution to fund the federal government.
• $4 million through state and private assistance grants through the EPA.
• $71 million Jackson has applied for through state allocation of the American Rescue Plan Act.
• Up to $50 million the city is pursuing through the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grant program.

Lumumba also referenced plans the city has had to decommission J.H. Fewell, the city’s secondary water treatment plant. While the city will still look to replace Fewell at some point, he said those plans are “a long way away” as the city needs the plant’s production to “make up the difference” with what O.B. Curtis can produce.

“That is the long-term vision, and it increasingly appears to be the long-term vision to create a new water treatment facility in its entirety, even moving away from O.B. Curtis,” the mayor said. “But J.H. Fewell is more than 100 years old, there are parts and equipment at J.H. Fewell that are completely obsolete and will never be repaired. But today, we don’t have the luxury of moving away from J.H. Fewell.”

Lumumba added that the city’s request for proposals for a contractor to operate the city’s water facilities will go until Nov. 7, and that he expects the contract to start on Nov.17. He continued to dispute Gov. Tate Reeves’ assertion that Lumumba had left the state’s Unified Command Structure established to assist in the Jackson water crisis, saying that he met with the team earlier Monday.

The post Visiting JSU crowds put strain on Jackson water system, mayor says appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The Mississippi Attorney General’s Office has determined that the killing of a mentally ill man by a Forrest County sheriff’s deputy was justified, according to a two-sentence press release Monday morning. 

A team of Forrest County deputies arrived at the home of Maurice McCarty Hughes’s sister on the evening of July 14 with one responsibility: to pick up Hughes to take him to receive mental health care. Instead, a deputy shot and killed him after Hughes struck him with a hammer. 

“Police job is to serve and protect,” said Cassandra Teal, who witnessed her brother’s shooting. “Not come and kill.”

Teal said an official from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, which handles the investigation each time a law enforcement officer kills someone in the state, came to see the family on Friday to tell them that the attorney general had found Hughes’ shooting was justified. 

Hughes, who had just turned 45, was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and bipolar disorder about 25 years ago. Over the years, he sometimes stopped taking his medication, and a family member would go through the process to have him civilly committed to get treatment at a state hospital. 

Civil commitment is a legal process in which a court forces a mentally ill person into treatment. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are committed for psychiatric reasons each year. About 5,000 Mississippians were committed in fiscal year 2021. 

Mississippi law requires sheriff’s deputies to pick up civil commitment patients and transport them to the state hospital or a holding location until a bed becomes available. That practice is common around the country, but in some places – like Tucson, Arizona – the officers responsible for commitment pickups receive specialized training and solely serve people with mental illness. 

Nationally, Black Americans are more likely than white Americans to access psychiatric services through involuntary commitment. 

Hughes had been committed about 16 times before, relatives said, always without incident. If he did not want to go with the deputies, they might tase him, but no one ever pulled a gun. 

Mississippi Today asked the attorney general’s office how staff reached the conclusion that the shooting was justified. 

“We considered all available evidence, the MBI investigative report, and applicable law to determine that there was no criminal conduct on the part of the officer involved,” said Michelle Williams, chief of staff for Attorney General Lynn Fitch.

Teal said that when she began the civil commitment proceedings in late June, she filled out paperwork explaining her brother’s state of mind and listed the items he had that could be used as weapons, including the hammer. 

All four deputies had received crisis intervention team (CIT) training, designed to equip police to understand mental illness and help people in crisis instead of using force. Nearly 700 law enforcement officers in Mississippi have participated in the training since mid-2018, according to the Department of Mental Health. But national studies have found no evidence that the training reduces the odds that an officer uses force against a mentally ill person. 

None of the deputies were wearing body cameras, so there is no video footage of the shooting.

Hughes’ death marks the first time the attorney general’s office reviewed a fatal shooting by law enforcement under a new law that took effect July 1. 

Previously, local district attorneys decided whether to present such cases to the grand jury and seek charges. Indictments of officers who kill people while on duty are rare in Mississippi and around the country. Officers are legally permitted to use lethal force if they fear for their lives, and the Supreme Court has held that judges and juries must defer to the perspective of the officer on the scene. 

Though it happened rarely in Mississippi, prosecutors could choose to release large amounts of information – including complete investigative files – after the grand jury declined to indict an officer. It’s not clear how much evidence the attorney general’s office will release in these cases.

Teal, an eyewitness to the shooting, said MBI officers never interviewed her. Instead, they asked her to provide a written statement shortly after she watched a deputy kill her brother. She was still in shock and later thought of other details she wanted to share. An officer told her he would call her to set up an interview, but he never did, she said. 

“I learned from that day, never believe nothing the police tell you,” Teal said. 

Mississippi Today has filed requests for records with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation and the Attorney General’s Office to review the evidence collected during the investigation and understand how the attorney general’s office came to its conclusion. 

The family has hired an attorney to represent them in a civil action “to seek justice” for their loved one, Teal said.

James Hughes, Maurice McCarty Hughes’ father, said he was not surprised by the attorney general’s conclusion.

“Black lives don’t matter,” he said, but then paused.

“They kill a Black man – I imagine if it would have been a white man they would have said the same thing. It ain’t about race. It don’t make no difference about color. They are just going to stick together on this stuff.”

The post Attorney general finds police killing of mentally ill man was justified appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi’s students have not fully recovered from pandemic learning declines, new national test results show, offering a different picture than state test data released earlier this year. 

On Monday the National Center for Education Statistics released 2022 data from the Nation’s Report Card, known officially as the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). NAEP tests fourth and eighth-grade students on what they know and what they can do in math and reading. The last assessment, given in 2019, showed significant gains for Mississippi students that earned national recognition. 

The 2022 NAEP results show declines or stagnation across all 50 states since 2019, a decrease that national leaders say is evidence of the pandemic’s impact. The greatest declines were in math performance, particularly for eighth grade students across the country. 

“As a country, we face enormous challenges, and there are many areas of serious concern in the data we are talking about today,” said Peggy Carr, National Center for Education Statistics commissioner, said in a press conference. “But I am convinced that this accurate and reliable information that we’re sharing today can help us turn things around for our students.”

For Mississippi students, there were declines in every tested area except fourth grade reading, where there was no change in student performance. The decreases in eighth grade math and reading performance were comparable nationally, but Mississippi saw a larger decrease in fourth grade math performance than the national average.

The 2022 average scores for Mississippi fourth graders were on par with the national average for reading and math, but Mississippi eighth graders were significantly behind the national average in both subjects. 

These results offer a different picture than the state test results published earlier this year by the Mississippi Department of Education, which showed students approaching pre-pandemic levels of achievement. The reading results are more comparable across the two tests, but NAEP results showed larger declines in mathematics that were not apparent in the state test data. 

“The 2022 NAEP scores prove the resilience of Mississippi students and the ability of Mississippi educators to provide high-quality instruction despite the challenges of the pandemic,” said Interim State Superintendent Kim Benton. “While our state’s scores are encouraging, they also underscore the need to press forward to ensure all students achieve proficiency.”  

The tests also broke down performance by subgroup: Hispanic and Black fourth graders in Mississippi saw declines in reading, while white fourth graders’ scores held constant. All groups saw declines in math performance, but the declines were largest for eighth grade Hispanic students.

“The pandemic also laid bare an opportunity gap that has long existed,” said Carr. “The results show how every student was vulnerable to the pandemic’s disruptions, and that it affected some students more than others.”

Additional survey questions included in the NAEP tests showed that, nationally, more high-performing students across the country had access to quality educational resources during remote learning than low-performing students. Those resources included access to a computer or tablet at all times, a quiet place to work at least some of the time, and their teacher available to help with schoolwork at least once or twice a week.

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Senate and House Democratic leaders Sen. Derrick Simmons and Rep. Robert Johnson provide a recap of their joint caucus hearing on the scandal-plagued Mississippi Department of Human Services and its administration of the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. In the poorest state in the country, millions of federal welfare dollars have been squandered and systemic problems remain that prevent the help getting to the poorest of the poor in Mississippi.

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