Mississippi Pharmacies Support Expecting Mothers With Monthly Maternal Medication Program

Mississippi’s maternal health crisis reached a breaking point in August 2025, when the state Department of Health declared a state of emergency, according to Amy Catherine Love Baggett, PharmD, co-owner of Love’s Pharmacy of Diamondhead in Mississippi. Rising maternal morbidity and mortality rates, driven by limited access to prenatal care, chronic health conditions, and social barriers such as transportation and housing instability, underscored the effects of health care for pregnant women, particularly in rural and underserved communities.

Against this backdrop, a pharmacy-led initiative known as the Mississippi Outcomes for Maternal Safety (MOMs) program emerged as a novel frontline response. Rather than waiting for patients to navigate the health care system on their own, this program leverages one of the most accessible health care touchpoints in the community—the local pharmacy—to provide ongoing clinical support and connect expecting mothers to critical services.

Each month, participating pregnant patients receive medications, including OTC prenatal vitamins, iron, and, when clinically appropriate, low-dose aspirin. That aspirin recommendation aligns with a level 1A recommendation from the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology for reducing the risk of preeclampsia, a leading cause of maternal complications. But the MOMs program goes well beyond medication dispensing. Pharmacists and community health workers use routine medication synchronization outreach to screen for nonmedical drivers of health—such as food insecurity, unstable housing, and lack of transportation—while also conducting trimester-specific assessments focused on vaccines, mental health, and blood pressure.

As Mississippi participates in the federal Transforming Maternal Health model and taps into over $200 million in Rural Health Transformation program funding, MOMs is positioning pharmacies as indispensable partners in maternal care—offering policymakers a concrete, data-driven model for how community-based innovation can save lives.

“The Mississippi Department of Health declared a state of emergency for maternal care in August of 2025,” she said. “Because of these statistics, we really dug into how pharmacies, accessibility in the community, and our frequent touch points could impact change for expecting moms in our state so that we're catching them as early as possible and helping them so they make it to term with healthy babies.”