Alex Milan Tracy for Underscore
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The dozens of independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan news organizations that make up the Rural News Network are developing the broadest news alliance reporting on rural America. These newsrooms are pursuing coverage that provides a more complete picture of what it means to live and work in these communities.
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LATEST NEWS FROM THE NETWORK
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Two Delta school districts move toward goal of local control
July 03, 2025
School systems can become districts of transformation if they consistently receive failing grades in the state’s accountability report card. Under that model, those districts have to develop and implement improvement plans.
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Nearly 70 percent of Mississippi rural hospitals don’t deliver babies; new report shows trend is growing nationwide
May 13, 2025
Rural hospitals across the country are shuttering their labor and delivery doors, leaving millions of women – including Mississippians – without maternity care.
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‘Devastating’: Blue Cross moms now face out of pocket costs for breastfeeding help
May 09, 2025
Mississippi moms will no longer be able to use Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mississippi insurance to cover lactation services after they leave the hospital.
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As Congress moves toward potential Medicaid cuts, expansion grows more unlikely in Mississippi
February 26, 2025
Hundreds of thousands of poor, disabled or pregnant Mississippians could lose health care coverage if Congress slashes funding for Medicaid.
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Mississippi again turns down millions of dollars to feed low-income kids during summer months
February 03, 2025
Hundreds of thousands of eligible poor Mississippi children will miss out on grocery assistance this summer after the state missed the deadline to apply for the federal program for the second year in a row.
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‘Easy to just write us off’: Rural students’ options shrink as colleges slash majors
November 26, 2024
As enrollments fall, rural-serving universities are shedding degree programs from music to chemistry.
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PHOTOS: Bridging language barriers through interpreter training
October 31, 2024
In Mississippi, where an estimated 35,800 residents face language barriers in health care, a recent event trained professionals to communicate more effectively with limited-English-speaking patients in an effort to bridge gaps in care.
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‘They try to keep people quiet’: An epidemic of antipsychotic drugs in nursing homes
September 19, 2024
The six homes in Mississippi with the highest rates of antipsychotic drug use are three private facilities in the Delta and three homes associated with the state’s psychiatric hospital.
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Mississippi has more rural emergency hospitals than any other state. Can the ‘lifeline’ program save rural health care?
August 07, 2024
Some have hailed the federal designation, created in 2023, as a lifeline for struggling rural hospitals at risk of closure. Others say it forces hospitals between a rock and a hard place.
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‘Goals nobody can argue with’: Mississippi universities rebrand DEI to focus on access, opportunity and belonging
August 02, 2024
The schools said the changes did not come with a reduction to any programs, scholarships or initiatives that aim to support the enrollment, retention and employment of students and faculty from historically marginalized groups
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Mississippi falls short of an eighth-grade literacy miracle
May 23, 2024
The gap between the national average and Mississippi’s eighth-grade reading score has gotten smaller over the last decade, but it hasn’t closed at the rate of fourth-grade reading.
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Company deemed ‘future of education’ for rural schools to falter without cash infusion, founder says
April 24, 2024
The Global Teaching Project that helps bring free college-level science courses to poor, rural public schools, many in the Mississippi Delta, will lose federal funding after the Biden Administration did not renew its grant last year.
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These Republicans wanted a Medicaid work requirement but couldn’t get approval. So they got creative.
April 18, 2024
Knowing the feds wouldn’t allow the work requirement, North Carolina Republicans went to the drawing board to determine if they could come up with a Medicaid expansion bill that still promoted work without requiring it.
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Marshall County’s only ER to close this month after mix-up with federal government
April 11, 2024
Rural hospitals in Mississippi are struggling to stay afloat. One report puts 29% of the state’s rural hospitals at immediate risk of closure, and 62% are losing money on patient services.
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Trouble in the wood basket: How a global push for renewable energy took advantage of rural Mississippi
April 09, 2024
In the last decade, towns like Gloster turned to what they saw as a new hope: the emerging wood pellet industry. While the industry is now grappling with a variety of environmental objections, the state and local governments have invested millions of dollars through tax exemptions and other incentives, in an attempt to stem rural disinvestment.
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