JACKSON, Miss. ( WJTV ) – In the past two legislative sessions, Mississippi lawmakers have passed bills that aim to chip away at the state’s nationally low maternal and child healthcare rankings.

Senate leaders will meet this fall to see what else can be done for mothers and babies.

In 2023, lawmakers passed a bill that expanded Medicaid services for a full year for new mothers. In 2024, a presumptive eligibility bill became law, allowing expecting mothers to access healthcare within their first trimester.

State Senator Rod Hickman (D-District 32) is a member of this year’s study group. He expects similar results to come out of these discussions.

“Last year, we extended our postpartum care and then we capitalized on that with presumptive eligibility. This committee is only going to push the gas to, to help drive us further,” he said.

State Senator Nicole Boyd (R-District 9) is the chairwoman of the study group. She said healthcare will be a focal point, as well as the state’s foster care system.

“We’ve seen some maternal mortality rates that have gone down, but we’ve also got a lot more work to do in children mortality rates and infant mortality rates. And the last two years, we’ve passed a tremendous amount of legislation. And where it comes to adoption, foster care, CPS, we’ve enabled baby boxes to be put into this state,” she said. “We also enacted a very robust foster parent bill of rights. We’ve also looked at the entire kind of mental health aspect of CPS. What are the things that we have within the state? What are the gaps within that?”

Boyd was central to this year’s Medicaid expansion negotiations that ended in a stalemate between House and Senate negotiators, but expansion will not be a topic of discussion in this study group.

“That will be handled by the Medicaid committee, particularly in regards to that. Medicaid issues always come up when we are talking about women, children and families just because a huge percentage of our first in the state are teen Medicaid mothers, but I don’t expect expansion per se in these conversations,” she said.

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