BILOXI, Miss. (WLOX) - As the Trump administration continues to direct more federal funds to be pulled from an array of programs, the impacts of those cuts are being felt in South Mississippi.
“I feel like we’re treading on uncharted territory, where on any given day, the current administration may say to an organization, your funding is cut.”
That’s James Pennington’s take on the situation. He’s the executive director of Back Bay Mission.
Monday, his staff is operating with two less employees, because the federal dollars that funded their employment are now gone.
“Our community health worker grant was terminated,” he told WLOX News. “We got a letter from the Mississippi State Department of Health that said their funding was terminated from the current administration.”
Both community health workers had been employed at Back Bay Mission for more than a year, Pennington said. On top of that, the $200,000 grant had just been re-approved at the start of the year.
When Pennington got the letter late last week, he was shocked.
“They were doing some really important work. Looking at health outcomes, getting people connected with either dental, mental, medical, whatever kind of healthcare they needed,” he explained. “And Mississippi, of course, we’re pretty much the leader in poor health outcomes.”
The Mississippi State Health Department website says community health workers “play an essential role in Mississippi’s communities” and they are “a connection to vital health and social services.”
The website even says that many more community health workers are needed throughout the state.
The Gulf Coast Center for Nonviolence is among the nonprofits that were trying to bring on one of those health workers through a grant.
After more than a year of planning, that won’t happen now.
“It’s a very valuable program across the state because it works with people who are considered vulnerable,” the center’s executive director, Stacey Riley, told WLOX News.
The shoring up of the community health worker grant is just the tip of the iceberg, Riley added, and has much broader impacts.
The Center for Nonviolence applies for federal dollars through the website Grants.gov.
Typically, there are thousands of grants that the center could apply for, Riley said. Now, there are just two.
“Our budget is 75 to 80% federal funds,” she explained. “Nonprofits cannot make it effectively and be able to do essential services, and expand access to services, without the availability of those federal funds.”
If the lack of grants is a trend over the next three-and-a-half years, the Center for Nonviolence will lose decades of progress, Riley added.
“We would only be able to operate a shelter and provide a safe space,” she said. “We would go back to where we were in the early 1980s.”
As for Back Bay Mission, James Pennington said he recognizes wanton federal spending is a problem, but this is not the solution.
“This is not the way to do it -- cutting and slashing programs that are critical to the well-being of the people of Mississippi and our country,” he said.
WLOX News reached out to the Mississippi State Department of Health for more information. So far, we have not received a response.
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