JACKSON — African American women in the Delta are suffering from higher rates of poverty, obesity, and maternal and infant mortality than the Mississippi state averages, a new report released this week reveals. The Southern Rural Black Women's Initiative released the study at a press conference at the Capitol Tuesday. The group works in rural communities in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi to administer funding through partner-nonprofit organizations such as the Children's Defense Fund in Mississippi,

The Center for Research and Policy in Public Interest conducted the research, interviewing more than 200 women in the three states over a year to produce the findings. The unemployment rate for black women in Bolivar, Washington and Sharkey counties is more than double the state unemployment rate and triple the national average.

Limited access to health care and services also makes life for women in the Mississippi Delta difficult. Oleta Fitzgerald, executive director of the southern region of the Children's Defense Fund, said the report confirms that most women and families in the Delta fall into the Medicaid gap—a result of Mississippi not expanding Medicaid—despite children's ability to access health care through CHIP benefits or Medicaid.

"For families and for women who go to emergency rooms and can get access and care, they don't get the pharmaceuticals," Fitzgerald said. "So (they) can get diagnosed but can't afford the medicine."

The initiative started 15 years ago when women began rolling off welfare but not finding jobs in rural areas. In Mississippi, the Delta is the primary area of focus for the initiative's efforts. Across Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, the initiative has helped start agricultural cooperatives for women with farms and land, as well as worker-owned companies such as a sewing company that women can own stock in.

The report's author, Dr. C. Nicole Mason, said that the idea that these women are benefiting from public assistance is a myth. She said that less than 3 percent of the women surveyed in the study received any form of public assistance.

The initiative is in need of more financial support and investment from local, state and federal levels, Fitzgerald said.

"If we had a miniscule amount of investment from the public sector as does Toyota or Nissan or somebody else that we pay so that they'll come sit next to us, we could make these economies sing in rural areas in Mississippi," Fitzgerald said.

Fitzgerald said it will take sounder local policy to solve economic and infrastructure issues, and she does not expect to get much movement from the Legislature to fund the initiative immediately. However, if the Legislature pushes for tax breaks, the Children's Defense Fund would like them to be earned income-tax credits.

"These people are struggling, and the fact that they are able to get up and put one foot in front of another is a testament to the black community," Fitzgerald said. "And when you live in rural, isolated areas, you learn to make a way out of no way."

Natalie Collier, who directs the Youth Initiative and works with a cohort of young women each year, said that the report's findings reveal that the way the women she works with have been treated "is unjust, unloving, and quite frankly, unpatriotic."

"They're doing their part, but my question is, 'What will we do to support them?'" Collier said at the press conference. "This report, as far as the young women I work with every day are concerned, is a request to do something different about it."

E-mail comments and story tips to reporter Arielle Dreher at [email protected].