Dr. Daniel Edney, incoming Mississippi health officer, has endorsed increased Medicaid coverage for poor mothers in the state after they give birth. Edney says he supports expanding postpartum care from the state’s current policy of two months to a full year as the “easiest thing to do” to improve health disparities. “We have got to look at moving postpartum care back out to a year again,” he says. “Two months is not enough. We have women who are dying in months three, four and five from complications of pregnancy.” Mississippi State Department of Health data shows that 136 Mississippi mothers died either during pregnancy or within one year of their pregnancy’s end between 2013 and 2016. Of those deaths, 86% of them occurred postpartum.