In the late 2000s, Andriana Dixon regularly drove an hour and a half one way from McGehee to Little Rock for her first child’s doctor’s appointments.
“There were no pediatricians in my area at the time, and I wonder how many parents are out there who are choosing to do that same thing,” she said. Andriana Dixon (Courtesy of Made Essentially doula service via Facebook)
Dixon’s experience is not unique, regarding both the shortage of health care providers in rural Arkansas and the fact that Black children and families face systemic barriers to care both statewide and nationwide.
Arkansas’ Black children consistently have worse health outcomes from birth onward than children of other races, according to a study published Wednesday by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
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The Race for Results report collected a decade’s worth of data on child health and wellbeing and found widespread disparities between white and nonwhite children nationwide. The study analyzed data by state and race, measuring health based on 12 indicators like birth weight and enrollment in early childhood education.
On a scale of 0 to 1,000, Arkansas had the following scores for child wellbeing in each racial group:
299 for Black children, ranking 42nd out of 46 states studied
397 for Latino children, ranking 45th out of all 50 states
597 for white children, ranking 47th out of all 50 states
562 for children of two or more races, ranking 30th out of all 50 states
616 for American Indian or Alaska Native children, ranking 5th out of 31 states
624 for Asian and Pacific Islander children, ranking 42nd out of 45 states
Black maternal mortality in Arkansas rose 110% in two decades, study shows
Nationally, Black children scored lower than any other group at 386, while Asian and Pacific Islander children and white children scored highest at 771 and 697, respectively.
Arkansas has the nation’s highest maternal mortality rate and the third highest infant mortality rate regardless of race, according to the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement, which launched a project in 2022 to raise awareness about the issue.
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Additionally, the rate at which Black women in Arkansas die during childbirth or within a year of giving birth more than doubled from 1999 to 2019, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Dr. Eduardo Ochoa, pediatrician (Courtesy of University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences)
Dixon, who now lives in White Hall, has been a special education teacher for children from preschool to 12th grade since 2016, and she has been a doula since 2020, working with families from Little Rock to the Delta. The racial gaps in children’s health and education shown in the Race for Results report line up with what she has observed in both of her careers, she said.
The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Arkansas Children’s Hospital are working together to address racial disparities in health outcomes, said Dr. Eduardo Ochoa, vice chair of diversity and health equity with UAMS pediatrics.
“We know that there are other factors like food insecurity and care deserts [that determine health], so we try to address as many of those non-medical factors as we can,” Ochoa said.
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Addressing barriers to care
Some of Arkansas’ 75 counties do not have hospitals, according to the state Department of Health. Many had very few full-time primary care physicians per 10,000 residents in 2020, according to ACHI data, and medical professionals in specialized disciplines, like pediatrics, are few and far between outside populous areas.
Arkansas Children’s has the state’s only accredited neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), and the hospital’s Nursery Alliance brings neonatal care providers to hospitals throughout the state, both in person and virtually. Dr. Ashley Ross, neonatologist (Courtesy of University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences)
“Our tele-NICU program is kind of in its infancy, no pun intended, but we’re trying to build our telehealth system in Arkansas, which is really robust,” said Dr. Ashley Ross, the neonatology section chief at UAMS and Arkansas Children’s, who runs the Nursery Alliance.
Ross said one of the biggest barriers to neonatal care in rural Arkansas is reliable transportation, especially with great distances between homes and hospitals.
He added that the Alliance focuses on underserved regions and communities, such as South Arkansas, and works to ensure that Arkansans carry their pregnancies to term and deliver babies with healthy birth weights.
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According to Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, 9.5% of all babies in Arkansas were born with low birth weights in 2021, and 17% of Black infants had low birth weights.
Being born at less than 5.5 pounds, often caused by premature birth, creates health risks for children not only in infancy but throughout childhood and even into adulthood, according to the Race for Results report.
“Between 2016 and 2021, the percentage of babies born at a healthy birth weight stayed the same for white children (93.0%) and declined slightly among other racial and ethnic groups, with the largest drops for Asian and Pacific Islander and Black babies,” the report states.
Those groups also saw the largest decreases in enrollment in early childhood education between 2007–11 and 2017–21, the report states.
It wasn’t a piecemeal approach that got us here. It was a full-on targeting of Black people, Indigenous people and other people of color.
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– Maricella Garcia, Race Equity Director of Advocacy at Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families
Access to education is one of the many social determinants of health, Ochoa said. His work includes making early childhood education more accessible for immigrant and non-English-speaking families in Southwest Little Rock, which has a large Hispanic and Latino population.
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UAMS is the grantee for the federal Head Start program, and enrollment has only recently returned to where it was before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in 2020, Ochoa said.
“Anything that can help children in the first three years of life is very important to their success in school and after school and employment and things like that, because the first three years are so important to brain development,” he said.
Policy solutions and public awareness
In the report, the Casey Foundation recommends several widespread policy measures to improve children’s health and wellbeing. The report acknowledges that “universal policies are important but insufficient for continued progress” and encourages states to create programs that specifically aid people of color.
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The foundation’s proposed solutions include expanding the federal child tax credit and the earned income tax credit. Ochoa said implementing these policies on the state level “would really go a long way in improving the health of children” in Arkansas.
Arkansas Legislature saw wide range of maternal and reproductive health legislation in 2023
AACF supports requiring presumptive Medicaid eligibility for pregnant Arkansans and extending postpartum Medicaid coverage from 60 days to 12 months after birth. State Rep. Aaron Pilkington, R-Knoxville, sponsored bills during the 2023 legislative session that would have created both policies.
Neither bill advanced because of cost concerns, Pilkington said last year, and he plans to reintroduce them in a future session.
These changes to state Medicaid policy would give mothers and babies more timely prenatal and postpartum care, which would reduce maternal and infant mortality, said Maricella Garcia, AACF’s Race Equity Director for Advocacy.
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Maricella Garcia (Courtesy of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families)
“Moms are going to put their kids and family first, and if they don’t have access to health care, they’re unlikely to go to the doctor because they can’t afford it, so they’ll push off whatever feelings they have that something is wrong with them,” she said.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services data released in December shows 78,506 fewer Arkansas children were enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) in September than in March of 2023, an 18% enrollment decrease.
Systemic barriers to health and education, as the Race for Results report outlined, must be addressed with systemic solutions, not piecemeal ones, Garcia said.
“It wasn’t a piecemeal approach that got us here,” she said. “It was a full-on targeting of Black people, Indigenous people and other people of color.”
NEW YORK – When Father Joseph Friend had about 20 seconds to greet Pope Francis near the end of a recent retreat for parish priests in Rome, he spoke about the work he does with immigrants in his community, to which he said the pontiff replied, “Continue to work with the immigrant, continue to work with them and love them!”
The interaction took place in Spanish, something Friend credits to those he serves.
“When I got to speak to him, and I serve many Mexican immigrants, I thought about how cool it is that there’s the spirit of the poor, the spirit of the marginalized, the spirit of those who struggle, but it is through the immigrant that I was able to speak to the Holy Father in his native tongue,” Friend told Crux.
Friend’s personal moment with Pope Francis came on the last day of the April 28-May 2 retreat, when the pontiff visited with the approximate 200 parish priests from around the world in attendance. Friend, who is the pastoral administrator of Holy Cross Church. Holy Spirit Church, and Our Lady of the Lake Church in the Diocese of Little Rock, Arkansas, was one of five American priests in attendance.
Other than brief, individual greetings with each priest, Friend said Pope Francis spent an hour and a half speaking to them in a question-and-answer format. Friend said Pope Franics told them to be better brother priests and be better connected to their bishops, warned how gossip can destroy a presbyterate, spoke about discernment, and emphasized the spirit of synodality and the spirit of mission.
“Gosh, the Holy Spirit was so present in his voice. I was just crying the whole time. I was sitting there, thinking ‘this is the vicar of Christ, and we get to sit in front of him and listen to him for an hour and a half,’” Friend said. “It was so clear the spirit was with him. Everything he was saying was needed.”
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Related to the spirit of mission, Friend said Pope Francis pushed them to really get out into their communities and live out the faith, and to embrace the gifts the laity bring to the faith community.
“I really am inspired to bring that missionary spirit back to our parish, and I think synodality makes the most sense in the grassroots,” Friend explained.
“People are trying to look up and get a clear definition of it, but it’s more of a reality to be lived where you are, sitting down with your people, asking them where the holes are, who’s in need, how can we serve them, what are our spiritual needs, what are we lacking in our prayer life and how can we better respond as a church.”
Before the time with Pope Francis, the priests had already had four days together.
Friend said he knew the retreat would be an amazing experience from the moment the priests gathered near St. Peter’s Basilica to get their passports checked by the Swiss Guard, and load on to buses to head over to the retreat location outside of Rome. Friend said the first people he met when he arrived, suitcase still in hand, were priests from China, the Congo, Japan, Argentina, and Paraguay.
“Just think of the map of airplanes going all across the world and priests on these different airplanes and all converging at St. Peter’s [Square]. How beautiful is that?” Friend asked. “15 hour flights, 9 hour flights, 10 hour flights, and all of the sudden we’re walking with our bags up to each other.”
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“It was amazing,” Friend added.
Once the retreat got underway, Friend said they started everyday with breakfast at 7 a.m., followed by prayer at 8 a.m. From there they spent time in their small groups responding to a central question presented to them each day, and also responding to questions posed in different presentations.
Friend said his group included a priest from Mexico, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Malta, Ireland, England, Scotland and two from the Philippines. He also said he met a priest from Iraq whose parish was destroyed by ISIS, a priest from Russia who talked about the parishes that have been taken by the government, and a priest from Sri Lanka who was in the parish that was bombed in the 2019 Easter bombing.
However, no matter where the priests were from, Friend said they all faced the same challenges – nihilism, individualism, and hedonism in their communities. He said he heard those three words from priests from all over the world time and time again.
Another takeaway from the retreat, Friend said, is the universality of the church in the sense that the priesthood is a brotherhood, and they’re not “individual popes in our little counties.”
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“We have to be together as brothers, and I think in our dioceses that was cultivated in the seminary and it’s highly cultivated now,” Friend said. “It’s not to say the spirit hasn’t been working, and I think we’ve done a lot of good things as steps in formation, but this just gives me all the more zeal to work with my brother priests and to realize that we’re together on a mission.”
Crux spoke with Friend on May 9, a week after the conclusion of the retreat. He said when he returned, he was able to thank the immigrants in his community for giving him a special moment he had with Pope Francis. And he has spoken to a few of his brother priests about helping to keep him more accountable in speaking about others.
In general though, Friend said he’s being prudent in how he shares what he learned with his community.
“We were tasked with being missionaries of synodality. And I can certainly come back and force the message down people’s throats … but that’s going to be determined, what does it mean to be a missionary of synodality?” Friend asked.
“That’s something I’m taking very seriously in prayer, and asking for the guidance of the spirit, and to be prudent in the next steps I take as a missionary of synodality.”
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Reflecting on the fact that the retreat even happened, he said it’s a sign of health in the church.
“How cool is it that [Pope Francis] selected a few guys from the grassroots level to be able to experience that. Whereas before, when would this have happened in the synodal process?” Friend wondered.
“Obviously, it’s a thing for bishops and cardinals and God bless them and I thank them for their ministry, but for the average guy living in the Delta in Arkansas, this is probably the first time in history, probably, that we were invited to do something like this and maybe there’s some health in that,” Friend said.
STARKVILLE, Miss. — The Mississippi State Bulldogs will travel to take on the Arkansas Razorbacks. There has been much talk about the Bulldogs hosting a regional, and D1 baseball projected them to host in their latest Field of 64.
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Interestingly enough, they have State matched up with the Razorbacks. The path for MSU to host a regional is clear, but speculation has started to rise about whether they could play themselves into a national seed.
A series win in Fayetteville would put them within arms reach of it, but that will be a tall task. The Razorbacks tout one of the best pitching staffs in the country, and it will be a rokus environment.
However, the Bulldogs are playing good baseball, but what players need to step up for them to take the series? The key pitcher for the Bulldogs is Khal Stephen.
Stephen has been the ace of this staff and has routinely performed in big moments. He will have the chance to set the tone for the weekend going against Razorback ace Hagen Smith.
The key hitter is Dakota Jordan. Like his teammate Hunter Hines, Jordan is going through a slump by his lofty standards.
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The sophomore outfielder is talented but has not been showing off that skill lately. If Jordan has a big weekend, the Bulldogs have a great shot at taking the series and entering the top eight national seed discussions.
What: Mississippi State Bulldogs (32-16) (14-10) versus Arkansas Razorbacks (40-9) (17-7)
When: Friday at 6:30 p.m. CT, Saturday at 6 p.m. CT, Sunday at 2 p.m. CT
TV: SEC Network+ Friday and Saturday. SEC Network on Sunday
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Last Meeting: Arkansas won the previous meeting last season, 11-6. Kellum Clark went 3-4.
Last time out, Razorbacks: Arkansas lost their previous game to Kentucky 7-4. The Razorbacks dropped the series to the Wildcats. Arkansas leadoff hitter Peyton Stovall went 3-5 with an RBI.
Last time out, Bulldogs: Mississippi State lost their previous outing to Alabama 10-5. The Bulldogs fell behind 4-0 early and could never recover.
FAYETTEVILLE — Conference USA realignment will be reflected on Arkansas’ 2025 football schedule.
Missouri State accepted an invitation to join C-USA on Friday. The Bears’ first football game as a new member of the conference is scheduled for Aug. 30, 2025, against the Razorbacks in Fayetteville.
Missouri State’s move means Arkansas has 12 games scheduled against Football Bowl Subdivision opponents in 2025 instead of 11 FBS games and a game against a Football Championship Subdivision team.
Missouri State plays now as an FCS member in the Missouri Valley Conference. The Bears have served as Arkansas’ annual FCS opponent five times since 2000, most recently in 2022 when the Razorbacks rallied to beat Bobby Petrino’s final Missouri State team 38-27.
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Petrino, the former Arkansas head coach, is now the Razorbacks’ offensive coordinator.
Missouri State has had consecutive losing seasons since Petrino led the program to the FCS Playoffs in the spring season of 2021. Ryan Beard, a former Petrino assistant, now coaches the Bears.
The Razorbacks last played a schedule without an FCS opponent in 2020 when the SEC mandated a 10-game schedule of only conference games. Before 2020, Arkansas’ last season without an FCS opponent was 2004 when the Razorbacks played an 11-game schedule.
In 2025, Arkansas also has non-SEC games scheduled against Arkansas State at War Memorial Stadium on Sept. 6, at Memphis on Sept. 20 and at home against Notre Dame on Sept. 27.
The Razorbacks’ 2025 SEC opponents are expected to be the same as the 2024 season with playing sites flipped, meaning Arkansas will host Auburn, Texas A&M, Mississippi State and Missouri, and will play games at Tennessee, LSU, Ole Miss and Texas. The schedule will be finalized later this year.
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