Mississippi Federal Grants

This funding opportunity provides financial support for conservation projects in Mississippi, focusing on outreach, education, and technical assistance to help socially disadvantaged and beginning farmers adopt sustainable agricultural practices.

The Mississippi Delta is a historically and culturally rich region of the United States. The architecture, French, Spanish, British, and German, is as diverse as the people whose origins are European, Native American, Spanish, African, and more. But for all its cultural wealth, there is a poverty of health and healthcare in the region. Residents of the 18-county region contend with persistent poor health outcomes compounded by challenges to attaining preventive services and care, poor quality of care, and stagnant opportunity structures, particularly as it relates to cardiovascular disease (CVD).Roughly 1 in 10 (9.9% 28.6 million) adults in the US have at least 1 type of CVD, including coronary heart disease, heart failure, or stroke. This number excludes hypertension, a risk factor for and cause of CVD but not a type of CVD. However, hypertension or high blood pressure is a critical risk factor for stroke. An estimated 120 million American adults (48.1%) have it, most (3 in 4) dont have it controlled, and 1 in 5 adults is unaware they have hypertension.In 2012 CVD, particularly heart disease, was the leading cause of death in the Delta (244.4 deaths per 100,000). The regions residents experience age-adjusted death rates due to heart disease, stroke, and other CVDs that are considerably higher than national rates and the rest of Mississippi. According to the 2018 Cardiovascular Health Examination Survey (CHES) in the Mississippi Delta, the adjusted overall prevalence of hypertension among adults in the region 18 and older was 42.8%.The persistence of these outcomes in the Delta is attributable to modifiable CVD conditions and risk factors, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, coronary heart disease, COPD, chronic kidney disease, diabetes, and stroke. To sufficiently address these conditions, interventions must include evidence-based and practice-based approaches that are innovative and tailored to the unique challenges and strengths of the 18-county MS Delta Region. These interventions are needed in strategies that are focused on health systems, team-based care, and linkages to community resources and clinical services that address the social conditions that contribute to the prevalence of CVD in the MS Delta Region. This cooperative agreement builds from lessons learned from previous iterations. It focuses on policy, systems, and environmental changes that impact clinical and community settings and lifestyle changes that reduce uncontrolled blood pressure and CVD within the MS Delta Region.

The Long Term Resource Monitoring (LTRM) Element Cooperative Agreement Program.LTRM is the monitoring and research element of the UMRR Program. Overall guidance, funding, and UMRR program responsibility is provided by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) provides the scientific leadership for LTRM and the long term monitoring and research within LTRM is implemented in collaboration with the five Upper Mississippi River System states (Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, and Wisconsin). A directive outlining the mode of operation and the respective roles of each agency is embodied in a 1988 Memorandum of Agreement. The authority to enter into a cooperative agreement is stipulated in the Water Resources Development Act of 1986. Congress recognized the Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS) as both a nationally significant ecosystem and a nationally significant commercial navigation system. The Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center (UMESC) is the USGS facility which administers the LTRM element of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Upper Mississippi River Restoration program (UMRR). Five Upper Mississippi River System states which house six state-operated field stations provide data collection for water quality, sediment, fish, vegetation, and invertebrates, and land cover/use, and participate in numerous research projects based on these data. This work directly addresses the Secretarial Priority of working to restore and conserve at least 30% of our lands and waters by 2030.\This program announcement, with its support of UMRR, contributes to science that will enhance and inform the implementation of the Habitat Restoration and Enhancement Project element (HREP) of the UMRR. The UMRR HREP element provides substantial economic benefit to local and regional economies bordering the Mississippi River by increasing consumptive and nonconsumptive recreational opportunities. Research and information developed through this agreement will inform HREP planning, thereby indirectly supporting the Secretarial Priority of Advancing President Bidens Investing in America agenda by providing the sound science on which local and regional managers depend.