[keeda]

> Mississippi didn’t “solve poverty and racism.”

It didn't solve maternal mortality rates either, where it ranks dead last amongst the states: https://www.marchofdimes.org/peristats/reports/mississippi/r...

> Lasting change comes down to data-driven programs that work and the money to implement them. As long as you’re not asking for money and meet the community you’re working with where they are,[1] politics is mostly a red herring.

Kind of, but my point is it's not just a function of throwing money at the problem, because "meeting where the community is" typically a) is just the first step towards overcoming structural issues; b) requires properly skilled staff; and c) involves politics in some form. Like I would bet most of the things your dad had to do often had to be supported by the local power structures (e.g. being blessed by the village headman.) They may not even have had official policies to be changed, but for sure certain ways of doing things were institutionalized.

I know someone posted in a poor, rural corner of India whose primary "KPI" is improving the maternal mortality rate in their region, and meeting the community is only the first step in solving problems that include -- in addition to the problems you mention -- chronic malnutrition, unawareness of potential pregnancy complications, lack of appropriate medical facilities, lack of infrastructure to access any that exist, and, most insidiously, age-old biases about how "things should be" where women are at the bottom of the social totem pole. Each of them is a separate structural issue and most of them cannot be changed by working with the community alone.