Map and headline: Arkansas Advocate, 6/22/2026
Tess Vrbin reports:
Rural Arkansans face increasingly long drives to hospitals that deliver babies as more labor and delivery units have closed due to financial strain, according to new data from the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement.
ACHI, a nonpartisan health research and advocacy center, found that 29% of pregnant Arkansans traveled more than 30 minutes and 8% traveled more than an hour to give birth in 2024. The longer it takes to get to a delivering hospital, the higher the risk of health problems for mothers and newborns, according to a 2022 study from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
The median drive time from Arkansans’ homes to delivering hospitals remained at 16 minutes between 2022 and 2024, but residents of some counties saw spikes of 10 minutes or more.
Those include Ashley and Jackson counties, where hospitals closed their labor and delivery units in 2023. Ashley County saw the largest spike in residents’ median drive time to a delivering hospital, from 16 minutes in 2022 to 48 minutes in 2024. Jackson County’s median drive time increased from 20 to 35 minutes in the same two-year period.
A total of eight labor and delivery units have closed throughout Arkansas since 2020, leaving 31 delivering hospitals in 22 of Arkansas’ 75 counties.
Phillips County is majority Black. Ashley County is majority White. Both have a higher percentage of Black resident than the state average.
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