Speakers at Jackson forum press for food aid and affordable coverage
Mississippi ranks 50th in health and 49th in economic well-being, while placing 16th in education — a gain many have called “the Mississippi miracle” — according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s latest KIDS COUNT Data Book. The state ranked second-to-last nationwide on family and community measures such as teen pregnancy, single-parent families, households lacking college degrees and high poverty areas.
Mississippi Today brought health, education and community engagement leaders together on Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026, for its “Families Count in the Deep South” forum at the Mississippi Public Broadcasting Auditorium in Jackson, where staff presented the report’s data to about two dozen people.
Rep. Zakiya Summers, a Democrat from Jackson, delivered the keynote. “‘Families count’ must mean something beyond counting families in a report. It must mean their lives count when decisions are made,” Summers said. She called on her colleagues in the Legislature to prioritize funding childcare, maternal health and education.
Summers also pointed to problems that have arisen during the latest midterm elections, saying the midterm problems highlight the need for easier online voter registration, early voting and universal suffrage. She said voting rights are intertwined with children’s well-being because they determine who is given the power to make decisions that will affect future generations. Summers urged stakeholders to bring the same urgency they brought to childhood literacy to alleviating childhood poverty. “Before we finish the story of Mississippi’s so-called miracle, we must make room for the children whose lives still demand a different ending,” Summers said.
A panel on food insecurity reported that 1 in 4 children in Mississippi face hunger. In the Jefferson County School District, where Adrian Hammitte serves as superintendent, that figure reaches 1 in 3 children. Hammitte said a cafeteria worker in his district keeps four jobs to earn enough money to put food on the family table, and that one of the district’s best performing teachers holds perfect attendance but works three jobs to make ends meet.
Hammitte said adults who can’t afford to put food on the table raise children who are hungry, don’t perform well in school and repeat the cycle of poverty. He described a little girl in his district who ran up to him during a Friday afternoon dismissal, hugged his leg and said, “‘Can I go home with you this weekend? Because I know I’m not gonna eat.’”
Last summer, for the third year in a row, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves opted out of a state-federal partnership that would have given summer food benefits to roughly 320,000 Mississippi children who rely on free meals during the school year. In refusing those dollars, Reeves has called the summer food program “attempts to expand the welfare state.”
Mississippi remains one of 10 states not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, leaving tens of thousands of working Mississippians without access to health insurance.
Healthcare panelists pointed to a steep participation drop in marketplace insurance over the last year. In December 2025, enhanced subsidies expired that made insurance more affordable for more than 22 million Americans. Between February 2025 and February 2026, active enrollment in the plans fell by about 70,000 Mississippians. Panelists warned that the decline will create greater pressure on charitable organizations compelled to cover those gaps and will lead to sicker patients and higher costs for hospitals and the state.
Khaylah Scott, program manager for the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program, said she often hears people argue that those enhanced subsidies were part of a COVID-era policy. Scott said the policy worked, nearly tripling the number of enrollees, and it shouldn’t be forgotten after the pandemic. “When you make healthcare affordable for people, they’ll buy in,” Scott said. “I think that our state is safer and healthier when more people are covered.”