Oklahoma State Auditor Cindy Byrd’s office released the 26-page audit Wednesday after The Frontier reported last week that Attorney General John O’Connor’s office said the document wasn’t a public record and he would keep it confidential. 

Byrd said she decided to release the audit after receiving an open records request and consulting with outside legal counsel. 

“I have concluded there is no Oklahoma statute that gives any state official the authority to withhold this information,” Byrd said in a statement. 

A health department spokesperson said the agency “believes its response to this extraordinary public health crisis was prompt and effective within the resources and infrastructure available at the time.”

“The purchase of life saving personal protective equipment was paramount to the State’s ability to respond swiftly to the pandemic,” the emailed statement said. “Purchases were made in the midst of a global supply chain crises where acquisitions had to be made expeditiously.”

In a statement on Wednesday, Stitt said the pandemic was an unprecedented crisis.

“From the beginning my top priority has been to protect the health and safety of Oklahomans,” Stitt said. “In early March 2020 we were one of the first states to shut down nursing homes to protect the most vulnerable, saving countless lives. To keep hospitals open and our frontline workers safe, I issued executive orders to get PPE to our state as quickly as possible. 

“Looking back today, we can acknowledge that there were technical errors while still knowing we did everything we could to protect citizens of this state during an unimaginable time.”

In 2020, executive orders from Stitt suspended many of the legal requirements of the normal purchasing process, such as obtaining competitive bids or buying through preferred state’s vendors, so agencies could quickly respond to urgent needs for personal protective gear and other equipment.

The audit found problems with the agency’s payment and inventory records. Auditors received hundreds of supporting records for purchases in “disarray,” the audit said. 

The Health Department made 42 one-time purchases over the $250,000 limit permitted by the governor’s executive order, the audit found.

Paying in advance for products or services was not allowed under the executive orders, a violation of the Oklahoma Constitution, according to the audit. 

“In addition, several AG Opinions consider advanced payments to be unconstitutional and  violate the referenced Constitution,” the audit said. 

When the coronavirus arrived in Oklahoma in March 2020, Stitt named Gino DeMarco his “PPE czar” and put him in charge of PPE purchasing decisions for the state Health Department. DeMarco was also a state deputy tourism director at the time. 

Because DeMarco wasn’t a Health Department employee, agency employees were not always aware of purchasing details, the audit found. 

Then-State Secretary of Health Jerome Loughridge issued a memo that increased DeMarco’s spending limit from $250,000 to $3 million for single orders, even though he didn’t have the authority, the audit found. 

The state paid out more than $5.4 million in goods that had not been received, the audit found. 

The agency has since either received missing products it ordered or was working to get refunds, an agency spokeswoman told The Frontier last week. 

The Health Department also paid $80,000 in unauthorized finder’s fees, the audit found. 

The audit also called a $750,000 state contract with Shyft Partners LLC  for project management “questionable” and said the services the company provided did not appear to be unique.

“The uniqueness of the contractor appears to be that they had established rapport with the  leadership team,” the audit found. 

In April 2020, then-Attorney General Mike Hunter asked the state auditor to investigate spending at the state Health Department, including the use of federal relief funds. The request came following reports of drastic measures the agency had taken to secure protective equipment during the pandemic, including an attempt to spend $9.5 million for N95 masks from a company under investigation by the FBI.

Byrd’s office shared the completed investigative report on Health Department spending with the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office last year, she told The Frontier last week. The state auditor shared the document five days before then-Attorney General Mike Hunter resigned in May 2021. Gov. Kevin Stitt appointed O’Connor about two months later. 

Byrd said she felt compelled “legally and ethically” to make the audit public.

“Oklahoma taxpayers paid for it – they should get to see it,” she said in a statement.

The post Pandemic spending at the Oklahoma Health Department violated the state constitution, an audit found appeared first on The Frontier.

The audit isn’t a public record and will remain confidential because it is part of the agency’s litigation and investigatory files, a spokeswoman for O’Connor said in an email. 

In April 2020, then-Attorney General Mike Hunter asked the state auditor to investigate spending at the state Health Department, including the use of federal relief funds. Hunter’s request came following reports of drastic measures the agency had taken to secure protective equipment during the pandemic, including an attempt to spend $9.5 million to buy N95 masks from a company under investigation by the FBI. 

Hunter resigned on May 26, 2021. Gov. Kevin Stitt appointed O’Connor about two months later. 

Oklahoma State Auditor Cindy Byrd’s office shared the completed investigative report on Health Department spending with the attorney general’s office last year, five days before Hunter’s resignation, she said in a statement to The Frontier. She met with O’Connor on Aug. 4 and told him the audit was ready to be released unless he wanted to expand the scope of the investigation or look into any other issues, Byrd said. 

“He asked if he could have more time to review it and would let me know soon. I have not heard back from him,” Byrd said.

The attorney general’s office did not respond to questions from The Frontier about whether an investigation into Health Department spending is pending. 

When the coronavirus pandemic arrived in Oklahoma in March 2020, state officials scrambled to secure life-saving supplies, such as face masks. 

State officials authorized payments for millions of dollars on protective equipment in the early days of the pandemic, but initially declined to release information on suppliers. 

Last March, Oklahoma’s state auditor released a routine statewide audit that found the Health Department paid out more than $20.4 million for protective equipment it had no record of receiving. 

After the state audit, the Health Department said it would complete an internal examination of its procurement processes. The agency said this week that it has since either received the products it ordered or was working to get refunds. 

“We continue to work with the Attorney General’s Office to secure the final refund which is scheduled for payment soon,” the agency said. 

Past investigative audits

Hunter had released similar investigative audits in the past but said the reports only become public at the discretion of the attorney general or as part of court records if criminal charges are filed.

In 2018, Hunter released a critical investigative audit into State Health Department financial operations following a months-long multicounty grand jury investigation. 

Though the investigative audit and grand jury report found widespread financial mismanagement, both concluded no state or federal money was embezzled or stolen. The errors didn’t result in criminal indictments. 

In 2011, then-Attorney General Scott Pruitt asked for an investigative audit into a trust established to buy contaminated properties and relocate residents near the Tar Creek Superfund Site, a former lead and zinc mine. 

Pruitt and Hunter fought to keep the audit, which was completed in 2014, secret. 

In late 2017, Washington D.C.-based Campaign For Accountability, a nonprofit watchdog group, sued Hunter, saying the audit was a public record under the Oklahoma Open Records Act. 

Hunter eventually released the audit in April 2018, but said he only decided to do so “under his discretion.” 

The post Oklahoma Attorney General won’t release audit on Health Department spending appeared first on The Frontier.

When Gov. Kevin Stitt announced in October 2020 that his administration would relocate the state’s Public Health Laboratory from Oklahoma City to Stillwater, lawmakers and health care groups raised concerns the move would compromise testing capabilities during the coronavirus pandemic.

Shortly after the announcement, three state lawmakers representing the Oklahoma City metro area issued a press release, raising concerns about the move. Rep. Ryan Martinez, R-Edmond, said he would file legislation to keep the facility in Oklahoma City.

Over these protests, the Oklahoma State Department of Health moved ahead with the plan and signed a management agreement with Prairie One Solutions, a nonprofit formed in 2020 under the Oklahoma State University Research Foundation, to manage the new lab in Stillwater in December, before the state Legislature convened for its next session. 

The state paired the lab with a new pandemic research center, and state health officials have said the new Stillwater facility will “become a global leader in promoting pandemic awareness and preserving public health.” 

Emails obtained by The Frontier and StateImpact Oklahoma show state leaders wanted to quickly lock a management agreement with PrairieOne Solutions into place because of pushback from state lawmakers.

Attorney Matt Stacy, who at the time served as the agency’s hospital surge plan adviser, wrote in an email dated Oct. 29, 2020, that Elizabeth Pollard, Oklahoma Secretary of Science and Innovation, was “anxious” to get the contract finalized.

“We have already experienced some legislative resistance to the move to Stillwater and as many pieces, as we can have in place sooner rather than later will make this deal hard to break up,” Stacy wrote. 

In a written response to questions from The Frontier and StateImpact Oklahoma, the Health Department said it was aware the Legislature had “great interest in the success of the state’s Public Health Lab.”

“We wanted to work closely with them through it,” the response said. 

Martinez remains critical of the state’s scramble to relocate the facility. 

“It was a rushed move with low scrutiny, high cost and bad early results,” Martinez said in a written statement provided to The Frontier and StateImpact Oklahoma. “There was a clear intent to minimize and avoid communication with legislators, lab employees and the public.”

During the transition to Stillwater, the state faced testing delays after it temporarily outsourced some work the Public Health Lab would ordinarily do to other facilities. In a September 2021 inspection, federal investigators found the lab had mishandled COVID-19 testing samples and faced critical staffing shortages. The Health Department said all issues investigators found have since been fixed. 

In the past few months, the Public Health Lab has again come under fire for its COVID sample sequencing. Health officials and researchers use genomic sequencing to find new COVID variants and Oklahoma is ranked last nationally for total samples sequenced, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Officials have said the state recently improved its efforts. 

Legislature passed bonds for a new lab that haven’t been used 

While the Legislature passed bonds to replace the state’s old Public Health Lab in Oklahoma City more than four years ago, the Health Department hasn’t used any of that funding. The agency has also tapped federal pandemic relief money to help cover some of the cost of the move to Stillwater. 

Long before the beginning of the pandemic, agency officials warned the lab’s capacity was severely limited, the building was falling into disrepair and its equipment was aging into obsolescence. The lab’s infrastructure was decaying to the extent that it risked losing accreditation from the College of American Pathologists. 

The state Board of Health made obtaining state funding for a new lab one of its top legislative priorities in 2014.

The Legislature authorized a bond to build a new lab in 2017. Lawmakers passed House Bill 2389, which allowed the agency to take out more than $58 million in debt to build the lab. The lab was initially expected to be completed by 2019.

To date, that debt has never been taken out, said Andrew Messer, Oklahoma’s deputy treasurer for policy and state debt management.

In a statement, the Health Department confirmed it hadn’t yet utilized the bond.

Last year, the Legislature passed a bill that put a deadline on the State Health Department to take out the bonds by 2025.

Public relations and moving expenses

Amid opposition from the Legislature, the State Department of Health used about $2.9 million in funding from the state’s federal CARES Act funding for mobile lab trailers to assist with testing capabilities while the lab’s new building was being outfitted. The state ordered the trailers in late 2020, which were initially expected to arrive sometime in 2021. More than a year later, the Public Health Lab is still waiting to receive the lab trailers. The mobile lab trailers are still undergoing a quality check before they’re delivered to the state, a spokeswoman for OSDH said. 

“These trailers will allow for specialty processing, including microbiology and mycology testing, at the PHL, as well as, position the lab to be prepared for future pandemics,” department officials wrote in a statement.

Expenses have also included funding for the lab management contract the state entered with Prairie One Solutions, as well as fees to a PR firm to manage the lab and pandemic center’s reputation.

The state Health Department has paid Prairie One more than $1.69 million, Oklahoma Watch reported in December. 

Between October 2020 to November 2021, the Oklahoma City-based public relations firm Saxum billed the Oklahoma State Department of Health more than $250,000 for work related to the Public Health Lab. That figure comes from invoices the agency submitted to the Health Department. 

Health Department officials said they believed using the funds for public relations related to the Public Health Lab was an appropriate use of state and federal funding meant for public health information assistance. 

“The Public Health Lab and pandemic center are closely tied to our pandemic response efforts,

and both serve as tools in our overall response,” the agency said in an email. “This is evident through the COVID-19 testing and genomic sequencing services that are provided by those entities. We did not have the internal capacity to initially take on the communications and inquiries regarding the PHL and OPCIE.”

The post Emails show a rush to finalize a deal to move Oklahoma’s Public Health Lab in the face of pushback from lawmakers appeared first on The Frontier.

She shook her head as he described the night she had a miscarriage at a Lawton apartment complex and had to be rushed into emergency surgery. 

Prosecutors argued methamphetamine use caused Poolaw’s miscarriage between 15 and 17 weeks gestation. But a state medical examiner who testified for the prosecution during the one-day trial in October said there was a complication with the placenta and the fetus had a congenital abnormality. He couldn’t say for certain whether drug use caused the pregnancy loss. 

Prosecutors told the jury though witnesses couldn’t definitively say drug use caused the pregnancy loss “that doesn’t mean they didn’t have an idea.”

“We have a situation where the defendant put her wants ahead of the baby. She chose meth over his life,” Assistant District Attorney Christine Galbraith said. 

Jurors deliberated for less than three hours before they handed down the verdict — guilty of manslaughter in the first degree. Poolaw, who was 19 at the time, was sentenced to four years in prison. 

In Oklahoma, a growing number of women are facing criminal charges for using substances during pregnancy, as more babies have been born exposed to drugs in recent years, an investigation by The Frontier has found. Prosecutors have been aided by a 2020 Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruling that held women can be charged with child neglect for using drugs during pregnancy — a felony that can carry up to a life sentence. Courts in Alabama and South Carolina have handed down similar decisions.

Women can be prosecuted even if their babies are born healthy.

The Frontier analyzed the cases of 45 women across the state who were charged with felony child abuse, child neglect or manslaughter in connection with substance use during pregnancy since 2017.

​​Most of the women were charged with child neglect after their newborns tested positive for methamphetamine, but women also faced felony charges for using pot during their pregnancies in one county, even if they had medical marijuana licenses. 

The number of infants exposed to drugs before birth almost quadrupled between fiscal years 2015 and 2021, according to state data. Most of that increase came from marijuana, which made up more than 75 percent of cases in 2021. Eleven percent of the reports were from infants exposed to methamphetamine in the womb.

Nine health care providers and policy experts told The Frontier fear of criminal prosecution can lead to worse health outcomes for women and babies by preventing mothers from seeking prenatal care or substance use treatment. Many leading groups including the March of Dimes, the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, also oppose prosecution for drug use during pregnancy. In late December, 37 Oklahoma doctors signed a letter denouncing the practice.

Dr. Kate Arnold, the vice-chair of the Oklahoma section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, signed the letter. She believes it would cost less and produce better outcomes to offer more access to treatment and other support services instead of criminally prosecuting mothers. 

“The first chance that society is willing to invest in them is to take away their baby and put them in jail,” Arnold said.

Criminal prosecution can harm women even if their charges are later dismissed or they are ordered to treatment, said Dana Sussman, deputy executive director for National Advocates for Pregnant Women. The organization defends people against prosecution in connection with their pregnancies.

Women are often subjected to public ridicule and labeled as bad mothers when names and jail booking photos appear in the local news.

“Even if we’re able to get these prosecutions dropped or they’re successful on appeal, people are carrying the stigma of having been accused of doing harm to their babies or harm to their pregnancies,” Sussman said. 

Some prosecutors told The Frontier they believe criminal justice involvement protects children and can compel women to seek treatment.

Court records indicate that just 18 of the 45 women had so far received drug treatment either as part of a pre-trial program, or were ordered to attend treatment or complete an alcohol and drug assessment as part of their sentence, an analysis by The Frontier found. Five of the women who entered any kind of rehab program went to unlicensed recovery programs. Some of the programs are faith-based and require participants to work at menial jobs for little or no pay. 

Some of the women’s charges were later dismissed, while other women were awaiting sentencing or their cases were still pending.

At least 15 of the women spent time in jail before trial or were sentenced to prison, according to The Frontier’s analysis. Police and court records noted that at least 10 women who were later charged had limited or no prenatal care during their pregnancies.

State mental health officials say there are publicly-funded treatment options for mothers and pregnant women with no waiting list, but connecting them with services can be a challenge. 

While women can face jail or prison for prenatal drug use in Oklahoma, the state Department of Human Services can’t intervene and provide support services in such cases. Child welfare workers say there’s no mechanism in state law that allows them to get involved until a child is born. 

Oklahoma ranked fourth in the country for punitive or forced interventions against women in connection with their pregnancies, including arrests and involuntary commitment to treatment between 2006 to 2020, according to National Advocates for Pregnant Women. Only Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina had more. 

Prosecutors in Oklahoma filed at least 73 cases during that period. The organization said its case tally is likely an undercount.

Broad discretion

District attorneys have broad discretion over how or whether to charge women in connection with drug use during pregnancy, and the law has been enforced unevenly throughout the state. 

Some prosecutors have ramped up felony charges in their districts in response to an increase in drug-exposed newborns, while others have chosen to handle most cases through alternative courts to connect mothers with treatment and other services. 

In Tulsa County, prosecutors have handled the vast majority of these cases in juvenile court, where families can be linked to DHS services or substance use treatment. At least three women in the county have been criminally charged with child neglect for using drugs while pregnant over the past two years. 

Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler said he wants to keep the mother and infant together, but at the same time, his office must ensure the child is safe. 

“Ultimately, we know the government doesn’t do a good job of raising children,” Kunzweiler said. “And I’m not going to say that a drug-addicted parent is a better substitute for that. But you know, to the extent we can try and remedy that drug addiction problem and provide a safe environment for that child, we’re gonna try that first if we can.”

Brian Hermanson, district attorney for Kay and Noble counties, estimates he has prosecuted as many as 20 to 30 women per year over the past few years for using drugs during pregnancy. He charged at least seven women with felony child neglect in 2020 for using marijuana while pregnant, The Frontier found. At least three of the women charged had medical marijuana licenses. 

The number of drug-exposed newborns reported in Kay and Noble counties jumped from five in the 2015 fiscal year to 43 in 2021, according to DHS data. Most of the increase came from babies exposed to marijuana in the womb — there were 31 such cases in those counties in 2021.

Hermanson said the women he prosecutes typically receive a three to five-year deferred sentence, probation and community service. Some are ordered to attend parenting classes, recovery meetings or must obtain a drug and alcohol assessment to determine whether they need treatment.

“We’re not trying to put a bunch of people in prison, we’re trying to stop the damage, injury to these fetuses and these children that are getting ready to be born so that they can live a happy life and not be addicted when they’re born,” Hermanson said.

Hermanson said he believes he’s enforcing the law by prosecuting women after the 2020 state Court of Criminal Appeals ruling. 

One Ponca City woman Hermanson charged with felony child abuse in Kay County told police officers her doctor said she could use pot during her pregnancy, according to an affidavit. The woman had a license to use marijuana legally for medical reasons. 

Her baby tested positive for THC at birth in 2019. 

“I love my child, and I would never do anything to intentionally hurt her,” she told police, according to the affidavit. 

Police walked through the woman’s house but saw nothing of concern. She kept the pot out of reach of her children, an officer noted in his report. 

The woman didn’t respond to messages from The Frontier. The charge against her is pending. 

Research is mixed on how marijuana use during pregnancy may affect birth and developmental outcomes.

While some studies suggest pot can lead to low birth weights and attention problems, others haven’t found such associations. Outside factors, like smoking cigarettes along with marijuana, can influence studies’ findings.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend discontinuing marijuana during pregnancy. 

The district attorney’s office for Adair, Sequoyah, Wagoner and Cherokee counties hasn’t moved to criminally prosecute mothers, despite seeing an increase in babies born exposed to marijuana and other drugs. Kim Hall, first assistant district attorney, said her office handles such cases in juvenile court, similar to Tulsa County.

“That’s not to say that we wouldn’t file charges in an egregious case where a proper and thorough investigation were completed,” Hall said. “But that’s just not typically how we have handled them in this district.”

In Comanche County, where Poolaw was prosecuted, The Frontier found 10 women charged with felony child neglect or abuse since 2018 for drug use during pregnancy. Three women were charged with manslaughter. 

Kyle Cabelka, district attorney for Comanche and Cotton counties, declined an interview request and did not respond to written questions from The Frontier. The Lawton television station KSWO 7 News reported in August 2020 that Cabelka’s office planned to seek prison time in every maternal drug use case. 

Of the five Comanche County cases The Frontier examined that have so far been sentenced, four of the women received prison or jail time. Two of the women convicted of child neglect received 10-year sentences, with the promise of earlier release if they complete a drug rehabilitation program in prison. 

Oklahoma Department of Corrections drug treatment programs for women take between four months to a year to complete and have a graduation rate of 71 percent. There’s a waiting list to get in, agency spokesman Josh Ward said.

Prison instead of treatment

Women who use drugs during pregnancy are often dealing with complex issues, including past trauma and domestic abuse, said Paula Griffith, director of women and children’s services at Comanche County Memorial Hospital in Lawton, where Poolaw was treated for her miscarriage. 

She believes more support services for women before and during pregnancy would help. 

“Most of these women really want their babies and want to be able to take care of their babies. I think early intervention is probably the most key thing,” she said. 

Poolaw is a member of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes. She spent time in foster care as a child and struggled after aging out of the system, according to court records.  

Poolaw was unemployed and didn’t have valid identification to get health services through her tribe, she said in a recorded interview with police that was played at her trial. She had no prenatal care before her miscarriage. Poolaw told police she used methamphetamine when she wanted to forget everything and feel numb. 

“I’m not proud of it,” Poolaw said in the interview. “It changes you bad.”

Poolaw said she was scared and didn’t want to believe she was pregnant. She was surprised police had launched an investigation into her miscarriage. 

“I wasn’t glad or happy I lost the baby,” she said. 

Poolaw was jailed for a year and a half at the Comanche County Detention Center before her trial, unable to raise money for her $20,000 bond. The facility had a COVID-19 outbreak in spring 2020 and has been repeatedly cited by state inspectors for overcrowding. 

Before her trial, the Comanche County District Attorney’s office would not agree to a deal to allow Poolaw to go to drug treatment and instead offered her a 15-year prison sentence if she would plead guilty, her court-appointed public defender Larry Corrales said. 

Poolaw declined an interview for this story. After her conviction drew widespread national media attention in October 2021, she got a new attorney, John Coyle III.

Coyle called Poolaw’s prosecution “a sad case and an assault on women’s rights.” 

He plans to file an appeal on her behalf. 

Miscarriage as manslaughter 

The Comanche County District Attorney’s office charged at least two other women with manslaughter after miscarriages in 2020. As in Poolaw’s case, the state medical examiner could not definitively say drug use caused the miscarriages but listed it as a contributing factor.

One of the women, 33-year-old Ashley Traister, pleaded guilty in December and is awaiting sentencing. Her attorney declined to comment. 

State lawmakers enacted a bill in 2015 that changed the definition of stillbirth from 20 weeks gestation to 12 weeks in Oklahoma. The change has triggered the state medical examiner’s office to conduct autopsies on miscarriages as early as 12 weeks gestation in some circumstances. Stillbirths are typically defined as a loss of pregnancy at 20 weeks gestation or more, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Comanche County District Attorney charged 22-year-old Emily Akers with first-degree manslaughter in March 2020, some 10 months after she had a miscarriage at a Lawton hospital. 

The state medical examiner’s office conducted an autopsy and found that infection and a complication with the placenta caused the pregnancy loss but listed drug and tobacco use as contributing factors. The fetus tested positive for methamphetamine. 

Prosecutors allege Akers was high on meth when she arrived at the hospital’s labor and delivery department 20 weeks pregnant. But her attorney David Butler claims the Comanche County District Attorney’s office has not provided any evidence to show that Akers was under the influence of drugs at the time. 

A retired Lawton detective who worked security at the hospital reported Akers to police and also investigated the case, according to court records. 

A magistrate later dismissed Aker’s manslaughter charge, finding the state hadn’t presented enough evidence that drugs had caused the pregnancy loss, but Comanche County prosecutors appealed the ruling. 

Galbraith, the same Comanche County assistant prosecutor who tried Poolaw’s case, argued for the state at an Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals hearing in December.

Akers’ miscarriage occurred too early in her pregnancy for Oklahoma’s child neglect laws to apply, but prosecutors believed they could still charge her with manslaughter under state statutes, Galbraith said at the hearing. 

A decision in the case is pending. 

Child welfare can’t get involved

The Oklahoma Department of Human Services has no jurisdiction over pregnant women and state law doesn’t allow child welfare workers to launch an investigation until after a baby is born. 

But health care workers are required to report to DHS when a newborn tests positive for drugs.  The agency can then open a child welfare case and refer mothers to treatment.

It’s not always necessary for the state to take custody when an infant is exposed to drugs in the womb, Department of Human Services officials said. 

While the number of babies exposed to drugs increased between 2015 to 2021 in Oklahoma, the number of instances caseworkers recommended removing a child fell from 112 to 88 during the same period, according to agency data.  

Workers consider how substance use affects the caregivers’ parenting and if the child has the ability to protect themselves when deciding whether to recommend removing a child from the home, said Debra Knecht, a deputy director of Child Welfare Services at the agency. 

DHS policy requires workers to notify law enforcement when they believe a crime might have occurred, but that’s not the typical course of action, Knecht said.

It sometimes depends on where the mother lives. Some district attorneys have asked DHS to notify law enforcement of all cases of substance-exposed newborns, Knecht said. 

“We obviously know there’s a lot of criminal justice reform in Oklahoma, and an overarching goal of that has been more aimed at preserving families and preventing children from having to experience incarcerated parents,” she said. “But you know, if a (district attorney) decides to do that, that’s kind of on them.”

Police reports and court records listed Department of Human Services caseworkers as the reporting party in 13 of the 45 cases The Frontier examined. 

Need for more treatment options

Many women don’t seek treatment because they worry about criminal or child welfare involvement, said Teresa Stephenson, a senior director working on substance use issues for the Oklahoma State Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. 

Family treatment courts are one way to connect families to services. The courts help provide treatment to parents with DHS involvement and substance use issues. Women in the program were more likely to keep their babies with them after birth, Stephenson said.

But there are only five of these courts in the state, and there isn’t enough state funding to expand the program, she said. 

In recent years, Stephenson has seen an increase in criminal cases involving drug use during pregnancy. 

“I wish we could get more education out to assistant district attorneys and judges to better understand substance use and not criminalize individuals that are pregnant for their substance use,” she said. 

The Department of Mental Health is partnering with several state agencies, including DHS, to connect more families affected by substance use to services. That involves identifying people using drugs during pregnancy, as well as newborns exposed to substances.

That coalition is working to change the Department of Human Services’ definition of a substance-affected infant because it limits family care plans to only infants with neonatal abstinence syndrome and fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. 

Hundreds of infants with prenatal substance exposure and their families are not receiving family care plans, which are roadmaps to provide ongoing services, according to data from the state Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services.

State data shows at least 1,602 infants with prenatal substance exposure were referred to services during the 2020 fiscal year but didn’t get a family care plan.

Other initiatives to address substance use during pregnancy are emerging across the state. 

Dr. Stephanie Pierce is the medical director at the Substance use Treatment And Recovery Prenatal Clinic at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. She helped launch the program in Oklahoma City in 2019.

The clinic runs one day per week and provides prenatal services to people with substance use disorders. The most common substances Pierce sees, aside from tobacco and marijuana, are opioids and methamphetamine. 

There’s a need for more such care in Oklahoma, but some providers don’t feel equipped to treat pregnant patients who have substance use disorders, Pierce said. 

“There’s so many people that have these issues, and there’s just traditionally not a lot of OB providers that are really interested or excited about taking care of these patients,” Pierce said. “And I think a lot of that is due to stigma.”

She’s working with the Oklahoma State Department of Health to create video lectures on the issue for health care providers across the state.

Most patients and babies at the clinic have had positive health outcomes, Pierce said.

From October 2019 to July 2021, 91 percent of infants the clinic served were discharged to their parents’ care, according to data provided by the Oklahoma State Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. Two of the mothers who didn’t get to take their babies home were incarcerated.  

Clinic workers try to create an environment that is welcoming and free of judgment, Pierce said. Many of their patients have experienced trauma or have had negative experiences with the medical community. A social worker embedded at the clinic helps connect families to services. 

“We’re not just trying to catch everybody and punish them, and report that to DHS because that’s not what we’re about at all because that’s not what’s best,” she said. “It’s not fair. It’s not what’s best for them.”

This project received support from the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2021 National Fellowship.

The post She was charged with manslaughter after a miscarriage. Cases like hers are becoming more common in Oklahoma. appeared first on The Frontier.

Their doula, Ashlee Wilson, sat nearby and offered advice and words of encouragement.

“So, the first thing is, it doesn’t have to be perfect, right,” Wilson said as Daniel carefully crossed a corner of the blanket over the doll. 

“A real baby will be moving around,” he said. 

“Yeah, but look how swaddled she is,” Wilson said. “She looks so good and comfy. That’s a good fold.”

Wilson is a doula with the Tulsa Birth Equity Initiative, a new program of the George Kaiser Family Foundation that’s working to address maternal health disparities in the city. 

She helped the couple make a birthing plan, taught them about labor positions and made herself a constant source of support. 

Doulas are non-medical birth workers who provide emotional, educational and physical support during pregnancy and postpartum. They can also advocate on the behalf of women during labor and delivery.

Carmen describes herself as a researcher and knows that Black women are more likely to experience pregnancy-related complications than white women. The numbers troubled her, but she didn’t want them to overshadow the joy of her pregnancy. So she sought encouragement and support from a doula. 

“When you talk to other people, they always tell you everything negative about birth,” she said. “So a good thing about Ashlee is she brings you to look at it in a positive way.”

While the reasons for disparities are complex, Black Oklahomans are turning to doulas as a way to combat the disproportionately high rates of adverse health outcomes among Black Americans.  

Oklahoma reported the fourth-highest rate of maternal mortality in the country in 2018, and Black women die of pregnancy-related complications at a rate more than 60 percent higher than that of white Oklahomans. The crisis is closely tied to infant mortality. Black infants in Oklahoma are more than twice as likely as white infants to die before their first birthday. 

Black women also disproportionately suffer life-threatening complications of pregnancy and childbirth. They were almost twice as likely as white women to have complications that involved hypertension and blood transfusions from 2017 to 2019, according to state health data.

Research shows that patients with continuous labor support were less likely to have C-sections or use pain medications. Those who delivered babies with doulas also experienced fewer labor complications and were less likely to have babies with low birth weights, researchers have found. 

Medicaid programs in at least four states — Oregon, Minnesota, New Jersey and Florida — already cover doula services, and many states have passed legislation to offer Medicaid reimbursements for services or launched pilot programs in recent years. 

At least 20 states introduced legislation related to the issue in 2021, according to the National Health Law Program. But Oklahoma lawmakers haven’t authored similar bills, and the state has just begun to take preliminary steps to expand access to doula services, despite higher death rates among Black mothers in the state.  

Doula fees can range from around $600 to $1,500 in Oklahoma, a price point that’s out of reach for many low-income people in the state. SoonerCare, Oklahoma’s Medicaid program, pays for more than 57 percent of the births in the state, but doesn’t cover doula services. 

Register for our panel on how racism affects reproductive health

Almost 70 percent of the women who died between 2009 and 2017 were covered by Medicaid, according to the state’s Maternal Mortality Review committee. 

The Oklahoma Health Care Authority, which oversees the state’s Medicaid program, recently started internal discussions to explore doula service coverage in the state, an agency spokeswoman said. 

The state Health Department’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee investigates maternal deaths and issues guidance to policy makers and health care providers to improve outcomes. But unlike similar boards in other states, it hasn’t yet made specific recommendations to address what it has called an “alarming disparity” in birth outcomes for Black Oklahomans. 

Committee members told The Frontier that some of the recommendations target racial disparities, though they aren’t specified as such in the board’s reports. The committee also hasn’t yet recommended funding doula programs for low-income Oklahomans.

Review committees in at least 18 states, including Texas, Kansas and Missouri, have issued targeted guidance to address racial disparities. Texas’ maternal mortality review committee, for example, has recommended programming such as forming a subcommittee to analyze factors that cause disparities. The subcommittee was formed in 2018. 

The Texas review committee has also suggested stakeholders, such as state agencies and hospital systems, enlist Black women to help plan and develop maternal health initiatives. 

The Oklahoma State Department of Health did create a Maternal Health Task Force last year to study maternal mortality and improve outcomes. One of the group’s priorities is to address long-standing racial disparities. The task force is monitoring community-based doula groups to see how the state can expand on the programs and assist with efforts. 

Black Oklahomans died at higher rates

Black Oklahomans face deep-rooted health disparities.

Even as the maternal mortality rate for Black women dropped in 2019 to 40.8 deaths per 100,000 live births in Oklahoma, it still remains much higher than the overall state rate of 23.5 deaths, according to the Oklahoma Maternal Mortality Review committee’s latest report. 

Additionally, the report found that although Black women were less likely to report being screened for postpartum depression than any other group, they were the most likely to report symptoms of depression when they were screened. 

Oklahoma had the second-highest uninsured rate in the nation in 2019, behind Texas, according to the committee’s latest report. Medicaid expansion in Oklahoma took effect in July, allowing more people to obtain coverage. 

In 2017, 21.4 percent of Black Oklahomans reported being uninsured prior to pregnancy compared to 18.3 percent of white mothers. 

The state surveyed women aged 18 to 44 in 2019, and almost a quarter of the participants reported they felt a trip to the doctor was too expensive to attend, according to the state’s report.

Though poverty exacerbates the issue, research has shown that Black women are more likely to face adverse pregnancy outcomes regardless of income or education level.  

Some researchers have found racism contributes to worse health outcomes for Black Americans and the idea is gaining acceptance in mainstream epidemiology. 

Arline Geronimus proposed that the health of Black mothers deteriorated prematurely because of constant stress caused by racism. Geronimus coined the phrase “weathering” more than 30 years ago as a researcher at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor studying disparities in mortality rates among Black infants. 

The issues begin with the systemic injustice Geronimus studied, such as a lack of access to nutritious food and unsafe housing. Black Americans are more likely to have chronic conditions such as diabetes, obesity and hypertension. 

Farah Antoine-Mayberry and other birth workers of color believe that maternal and infant health disparities could be reduced if there were more of them in the field. 

Antoine-Mayberry is an Oklahoma City-based doula, lactation consultant and founder of For the Village, a nonprofit launched in late 2020 that’s working to improve the maternal and infant health outcomes of Black Oklahomans through doula, lactation and education services. 

A mother of five, Antoine-Mayberry has worked in hospitals as an occupational therapist for almost 20 years. When her youngest was born, she started to facilitate a breastfeeding support group. She threw herself into doula work in 2018 after she recognized there was a need for education around childbirth. 

Then she made a startling discovery: Among developed countries, the United States has one of the highest rates of maternal and infant mortality, and the problem is worse for Black families.

“That was hard information to absorb,” she said. 

One of the organization's goals is to increase the number of Black birth workers in Oklahoma. For the Village trains five doulas every year, who then provide free services to Black families. 

Researchers have started to examine whether receiving care from a physician of the same gender or race as a patient can improve health outcomes. A study released in 2020 suggested that the difference between mortality rates for Black and white newborns was cut by half when Black infants received care from Black doctors. 

Antoine-Mayberry said she has observed how bias exists against her Black doula clients. She educates her clients to be aware of biases that lead to hospital workers expecting them to formula feed instead of breastfeed. Research shows that hospitals in communities with larger Black populations are less likely to help initiate breastfeeding after birth. 

“I’m more likely to hear from Black patients that formula is needed than I am for my white doula clients,” she said. “This to me is a reflection of the biases that exist and not exclusively because of the circumstances of those cases.”

Bias against Black mothers from health care providers in Oklahoma is well documented. 

A 2009 study from the Oklahoma State Department of Health found that prenatal health care workers were more likely to give Black women guidance on illegal drug use and physical abuse, and less likely to give information on the appropriate amount of weight to gain during pregnancy when compared to white women. 

In 2015, the state Health Department released a study that found even though Black women had a much lower rate of smoking or drinking before pregnancy than white women, they were still the most at risk for infant and maternal mortality. 

The study recommended the state identify and address systemic racism within the policies of agencies, programs and health systems. 

Structural racism, access to quality health care, implicit bias and chronic health conditions all play a role in disparities in birth outcomes, said Dr. Syeachia Dennis, a family physician and an assistant dean at the University of Oklahoma-University of Tulsa School of Community Medicine. In recent years, Dennis has seen a movement in the medical education field to recognize that racism must explicitly be named as a social and structural determinant of health. 

“We have to dismantle all the structures that uphold racism that are keeping Black people, Indigenous people from having the same opportunity to just live,” Dennis said.

Maternal mortality in Oklahoma

On average, one Oklahoman dies from pregnancy-related complications each month.

The most frequent causes of maternal death in Oklahoma include heart conditions, sepsis, diabetes and hemorrhage, according to the Maternal Mortality Review committee's 2021 annual report. 

In 2019, committee members started to analyze whether maternal deaths could have been prevented and reviewed 34 of the most recent deaths. Of those cases, almost 71 percent were found to have a “good chance” or “some chance” of being prevented, according to the committee’s report. 

The pandemic slowed efforts to review deaths, and the committee finished reviewing cases from 2018 in October, said Jill Nobles-Botkin, an advanced practice registered nurse who oversees the committee.

In July, committee members started to review cases to try to determine whether racism or implicit bias played a role in deaths. So far they haven’t identified any, Nobles-Botkin said. 

“We’ve talked about the possibility that it could be there, but we haven't been able to definitely define that as a contributing factor,” she said. 

The board examines medical records, and sometimes law enforcement records, court documents and media reports when reviewing cases. But it’s difficult to determine whether racism or implicit bias contributed to a death by looking at those records alone, said Joyce Marshall, a committee member and director of Maternal and Child Health Service at the Oklahoma State Department of Health.

The committee’s recommendations don’t explicitly address racial disparities because they haven’t yet established that race was a factor in the deaths it has reviewed, Nobles-Botkin said. 

However, some of the recommendations are connected to racial disparities, committee members said. These include increasing awareness on the importance of preconception health care; educating women and families on postpartum warning signs and attending postpartum visits; and promoting the national Hear Her campaign, which aims to increase awareness of maternal mortality and women’s health following childbirth.

The health department also started offering online “racial disparity” training this year to maternal health providers, which includes teachings on how disparities affect health outcomes and how to recognize implicit and explicit biases. The first month it was offered, 175 providers signed up, Marshall said. The agency has plans to expand the training and will eventually offer in-person classes. 

‘It can save lives’

While progress to address poor birth outcomes among Black mothers has been slow, women are taking action themselves. 

Rose Hurd, 57, has offered support to families in the Tulsa community for more than 40 years and became a certified doula in 2016. She’s helped countless women through pregnancies, including her children. Hurd has also helped mentor other birth workers in the area. 

She’s seen health care workers fail to listen Black women or not involve them in decisions about their own pregnancies. Her goal is to empower families, act as an advocate and offer techniques, such as lactation support, that can lead to better health outcomes. 

Doulas are also a crucial source of support after babies arrive, when families might need help with safe sleep practices or postpartum depression, Hurd said. 

She would like to see Medicaid coverage of doula care in Oklahoma, even if only for basic services and postpartum care.  

“It can save lives,” Hurd said. 

Multiple independent efforts to train more Black birth workers are underway in Oklahoma. 

On a hot August evening in a classroom in downtown Tulsa, LaKala Williams joined a group of other doulas in training to learn about different types of medical interventions during labor.

Three students role-played a birth scenario wherein a dismissive nurse told the mother she needed to immediately decide whether she wanted doctors to induce labor. It was up to the doula to advocate for the mother to give her more time to decide and weigh her options.

Williams, 22, is a doula with the Tulsa Birth Equity Initiative, which provides free doula services to Black, Indigenous and teen Oklahomans, as well as those involved in the criminal justice system. 

The organization trains and then pairs community-based doulas with families. During pregnancy, doulas meet with clients once per week to build relationships, make pregnancy goals and craft birthing plans. Doulas stay with mothers for the birth and stay in touch with the family at least three months postpartum. There’s no income requirement to qualify for the program. 

Williams, who grew up in north Tulsa, has seen Black mothers in her community struggle with postpartum depression and breastfeeding. She wonders if they could have benefited from having help from doulas.

“I just think it’s really important to be heard and to be seen in this world,” she said. “And I think a lot of times women of color and people of color are put on the back burner, and they’re not heard and they’re not seen, especially in the health world.”

The program emphasizes forming meaningful relationships between doulas and clients, said LaBrisa Williams, the executive director of the initiative.

“The doulas don't just work with the immediate family, and mom and dad,” she said. “They know cousins and aunts, and they know the ins and outs of people’s families.”

Earlier this year, as a doula in-training, LaKala Williams massaged her pregnant sister’s aching back, practiced positive affirmations and had her sit on a birthing ball. She and another doula practiced the techniques at her sister’s home in Tulsa until it was time to deliver the baby at a hospital. 

Later, through a cell phone screen, LaKala Williams beamed with pride as she watched her sister cradle a healthy baby boy in the delivery room. 

“Seeing her cry after seeing her hold her baby — that is life changing,” she said. 

This project received support from the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2021 National Fellowship.

The post In Oklahoma, Black families turn to doulas for better births appeared first on The Frontier.

We focused on holding state officials accountable and stories that matter to Oklahomans. 

The state released information on pandemic supply vendors after I wrote about the lack of transparency on state purchases worth millions of dollars. Early in the pandemic, the Oklahoma State Department of Health changed its coronavirus testing guidelines after my report found it wasn’t following federal guidelines intended to get more people tested. 

We pushed the state to release important data to the public on outbreaks in nursing homes and additional information about when deaths occurred. 

We took a careful look at our coverage to consider how we could best serve our community. 

The pandemic took an incalculable human toll. Our reporters told the stories of those lost to COVID-19 through “Oklahomans We’ve Lost.” There were mothers, doctors, husbands, grandparents, veterans, advocates, teachers and coaches. Our goal was to put faces to the statistics. 

The Frontier also took time over the past year to write about important issues in the state’s criminal justice system. 

Earlier this year, with help from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, we sued for jail video from detention officers’ struggle with a man who later died. 

After our report that found Oklahoma was taking nearly a year to process rape kits, a state lawmaker held an interim study on the issue. 

Journalism that makes an impact takes time, tenacity and skill to produce. 

The Frontier is an independent, nonprofit newsroom, and your donation helps us produce work that makes a difference. 

Thanks to NewsMatch, individual donations to The Frontier between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31 will be matched by a coalition of national funders.

The campaign has helped raise more than $150 million for nonprofit newsrooms since 2016.

The post Help us continue work that makes a difference appeared first on The Frontier.

The first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Oklahoma was announced on March 6, 2020.

The Frontier will update this page as information becomes public from state health officials, which is typically around 11 a.m. daily. The Oklahoma State Department of Health releases hospitalization data on weekdays. Hospitalization data are the three-day averages of the number of patients.

The Oklahoma State Department of Health releases county-level data weekly on Wednesdays.

The Frontier uses federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provisional data to track the pandemic’s death toll in Oklahoma.

Updated 9/29/2021

Tracking vaccinations in Oklahoma:

As of September 28, Oklahoma has administered 4,126,107 doses of the vaccine in the state: 2,231,217 people or 56.4% of Oklahomans have gotten at least the first dose and 1,876,006 people or 47.4% of the state’s population are fully vaccinated. Oklahoma is administering the two-dose Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, as well as the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

About 58.7% of Oklahoma adults are fully vaccinated, and 69.5% of adults have received at least one dose, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The vaccines are not yet approved for children under 12.

Hospitalizations and deaths:

As of September 29, 10,208 Oklahomans had died from COVID-19, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Oklahoma State Department of Health now releases hospitalization data on weekdays. Hospitalization data released are the three-day average of the number of patients.

On September 29, the three-day average for hospitalizations was at 1,045 patients.

The highest number of hospitalizations so far was 1,994 patients on Jan. 5, 2021.

COVID-19 cases in Oklahoma

The seven-day average for new cases peaked at 4,170 on Jan. 12, 2021. On September 29 the seven-day average for new cases was 1,584.

The post Oklahoma COVID-19 cases trend downward, but hospitals remain strained appeared first on The Frontier.

The Oklahoma City-based Trust Women clinic said its call volume for the first two weeks of September has doubled. About two-thirds of those calls were from Texas, said Rebecca Tong, Trust Women’s acting co-executive director. The clinic is now scheduling appointments two to three weeks out, when it used to be able to book patients within a week. 

The clinic provides abortion care two days per week but is now working to expand its hours, Tong said. Trust Women also operates a clinic in Wichita. Some Oklahoma women have been forced to travel to Kansas for abortions as appointments at Oklahoma clinics fill up. 

“We’re doing whatever is necessary to add additional shifts,” Tong said in a Sept. 15 interview. “We’re talking about needing to recruit basically a whole ‘nother set of full time staff in order to support the clinic days because there’s no short end in sight for this.”

Oklahoma is also set to further restrict access to abortion this year, with a new slate of laws set to take effect in November. Some Republican lawmakers said they believe the momentum from the Texas law could help Oklahoma implement further abortion restrictions. One state lawmaker has already said he plans to push legislation similar to the Texas law next year. Gov. Kevin Stitt also told The Frontier that he would sign such a bill. 

Stitt, who signed five anti-abortion bills this year, has promised to approve every piece of “pro-life” legislation that reaches his desk. 

“Do I think there’s going to be left wing out-of-state groups that come in and try to challenge these just like they’re challenging the Texas law? Of course,” Stitt said in an interview with The Frontier. 

“But we have to make a stand, and we’re gonna do what’s right, regardless of what the courts, or some politically-motivated, left-wing agenda tries to come into our state and tell us what we should do here. So I’m going to sign them. I’m happy to sign them.”

The Texas law prohibits abortion after a medical professional can detect a “heartbeat” through an ultrasound, typically around six weeks, which is before many women know they’re pregnant. However, medical experts have called the term “heartbeat” misleading, as an embryo doesn’t have a developed heart at six weeks.

In Oklahoma, a nearly identical law is set to take effect Nov. 1, but the chief difference from the Texas law is who is tasked with enforcing it. While the Texas law relies on private citizens filing lawsuits in civil court, the Oklahoma law requires state officials to enforce the new restrictions. 

Sen. Nathan Dahm, R-Broken Arrow, said he plans to craft a Texas-style bill, allowing private citizens to sue abortion providers and others, by amending language in an existing “heartbeat” bill that he will carry over from the last legislative session. Dahm hopes the bill will sail quickly through the legislative process next session, as it already passed the state Senate, he said in a Facebook post. Dahm’s office did not return a call from The Frontier seeking comment last week. 

Stitt said he would approve of such a law.

“If the Legislature thinks they need to put some civil liability similar to Texas in there, then I’ll absolutely sign it,” he told The Frontier.

A day after the Texas law took effect, a group of reproductive rights advocates filed a lawsuit against Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Conner and other state officials seeking to prevent five anti-abortion laws from taking effect in Oklahoma, including the “heartbeat” bill. None of the new Oklahoma abortion restrictions include exemptions for rape or incest. 

Tamya Cox-Touré is the co-chair of the Oklahoma Call for Reproductive Justice, one of the organizations that brought the lawsuit. She said she’s concerned how the law in Texas will affect Oklahoma’s legal battle, as well as Mississippi’s pending challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. Mississippi is asking the court to uphold a state law banning most abortions after 15 weeks.

Under Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a constitutional right to abortion, states may not ban abortion before fetal viability, around 23 weeks gestation. The Texas and Mississippi laws are unconstitutional under that precedent. 

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in the Mississippi case Dec. 1. Cox-Touré is watching to see whether the judge in the Oklahoma case will hold off on a ruling until the Supreme Court rules on the Mississippi case.

“That’s kind of nerve racking — the fact that one case will have the domino effect of what happens in a region,” Cox-Touré said. But she still believes Supreme Court justices will strike down the Mississippi law. 

Stitt told The Frontier he has considered the concerns of providers and reproductive rights advocates about the loss of abortion access and the lack of exemptions for rape or incest, but he believes each pregnancy is “a life.”

“And I’m going to err on that side. And there’s all kinds of what ifs that people try to play with you,” he said of the lack of exemptions. “At the end of the day, if you have a heartbeat, we’re resolute that we should not take a life.”

The post Texas abortion restrictions have stoked a new battle over access in Oklahoma appeared first on The Frontier.

Outside of a few swipes at cities and states that shut down during the pandemic last year, Stitt skirted the topic of COVID-19, instead focusing on business growth in the state and his social media war with the animal rights group PETA. 

During a 20-minute speech in Tulsa, Stitt called the U.S. Supreme Court’s McGirt decision Oklahoma’s “most pressing” issue. The 2020 ruling found that Congress never dismantled Indian reservations for the Five Civilized Tribes that existed in Oklahoma before statehood and that much of the eastern part of the state is Indian country. 

The state of Oklahoma lacks jurisdiction to prosecute many crimes on Indian land and the task now falls to tribal courts and federal prosecutors. The ruling has challenged scores of criminal convictions in the state and many cases now have to be retried in federal court. 

Oklahoma has filed an application with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to overturn the ruling.

In response to Stitt’s speech, the Muscogee Nation on Thursday evening released a lengthy statement calling his remarks on McGirt “a harmful lie,” saying the decision “is not the biggest problem or threat to Oklahoma.” 

“For a very real threat to Oklahoma, no one needs to look further than the effects of COVID-19,” the statement said. “We and other tribes are working to be a part of that solution – with free-to-all vaccination clinics, contributions of masks for schools and by implementing access and distancing measures in our own facilities to protect everyone’s health.”

Stitt has remained largely silent on COVID-19’s toll on Oklahoma since March, when he held his last news conference on the pandemic. 

Instead, the governor spoke on Thursday about Oklahoma’s pro-business policies and the crisis in Afghanistan. He criticized city leaders and governors in other states for enacting policies that infringed on what he vaguely described as individual liberties, but made no direct mention of mask or vaccine mandates.

“There are governors in other states who believe in sacrificing freedoms by mandating and controlling their citizens,” Stitt said. “Let me tell you, bureaucrats in Washington D.C. don’t know what’s best for us. And let me assure you, I will always trust Oklahomans to do the right thing. 

“And as governor, I will never sacrifice our individual liberties for any price.”

Stitt’s speech comes in the midst of a continuing surge of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in Oklahoma. Hospitals are struggling with bed capacity and are managing a number of patients not seen since January. 

Oklahoma reported 4,152 new cases on Thursday, and more than 1,600 people were hospitalized for COVID-19. 

As of Thursday, 9,044 Oklahomans had died from COVID-19, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provisional data. About 43 percent of Oklahomans are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC. 

Throughout the pandemic, Stitt has touted that Oklahoma started its reopening plan ahead of most states in April 2020 while other states enacted mask mandates, lockdowns and other restrictions.

Last year, the governor even coined the word “covantage,” a combination of the words “COVID” and “advantage” to illustrate how Oklahoma might benefit from reopening before other states.

On Thursday, Stitt jokingly thanked California Gov. Gavin Newsom and “other shutdown states” for Oklahoma’s economic development. 

“California's liberal policies and endless regulations have made Oklahoma ground zero for business CEOs,” he said. 

In June, the electric car company Canoo announced it would build a manufacturing facility in Pryor. However, contracts have yet to be signed, according to The Oklahoman. Oklahoma has the eighth lowest unemployment rate in the nation, according to federal data cited by Stitt. 

A chamber board member asked the governor what he was doing to help hospitals during a Q&A after his speech, but Stitt declined to take questions from reporters. 

Stitt thanked nurses and doctors and noted that he signed emergency rules to allow hospitals to expand bed capacity. He also said the state has stockpiled protective equipment for health care workers. A staffing shortage has been the main issue for healthcare facilities, Stitt said, but he’s been in touch with federal agencies in an effort to secure more resources. 

Oklahoma’s current COVID-19 surge is different from past ones because the state has more resources to combat the virus, such as protective gear for health care facilities, medical treatments and vaccinations, said Health Commissioner Dr. Lance Frye. 

“Most of all, we have treatments for our most vulnerable population,” Frye told reporters during a virtual news conference on Thursday afternoon. 

Some Democratic lawmakers have been critical that the governor hasn’t held a news conference to address the pandemic in the past five months.

“In his speech, he didn’t mention the 7,800 Oklahomans we have lost to COVID nor did he mention COVID at all. There was no plea to citizens to get vaccinated or any plan to protect the voters who elected him,” Rep. Monroe Nichols, D-Tulsa, said in a news release after Stitt’s speech. 

“Instead, the Governor chose to show unnecessary hostility toward our state’s oldest allies, the sovereign tribal nations. In a time that we should be working together, the Governor continues to use national talking points and political rhetoric to divide Oklahomans.”

The post Governor largely silent on the pandemic as COVID cases surge in Oklahoma appeared first on The Frontier.

With less than half of all Oklahomans fully vaccinated against COVID, hospitals are dealing with a number of patients not seen since January. 

“The only two interventions that might make a difference right now is get vaccinated and wear a mask any time you have a chance,” said ​​Dr. Dale Bratzler with OU Health, speaking with The Frontier in an interview after the press conference. “I’m just asking for leaders to step up and to emulate that, show that, be role models to the community.”

Last year, as the winter surge was filling Oklahoma hospitals, Gov. Kevin Stitt regularly joined health care leaders at media events to urge mask wearing and social distancing. 

But Stitt, who spent Tuesday traveling to Ponca City to “give an update on the things we are doing to make Oklahoma a Top Ten state,” has not publicly addressed Oklahoma’s growing COVID crisis in several weeks. 

On Monday, Stitt released a video criticizing President Biden’s policies in Afghanistan, calling it unfair to the 49 military members from Oklahoma who died during the two decade-long war. 

As of Tuesday, 8,902 Oklahomans had died of COVID-19, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

The governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment last week concerning his silence on COVID. 

When asked by The Frontier on Tuesday whether Stitt is concerned about hospital capacity issues and what he is doing to support hospitals, the governor’s office declined to answer the questions directly. Instead, a spokeswoman emailed a statement saying the governor thanks doctors and nurses for their work, and that he will “continue to work with the Health Department to make sure everything is being done to help get Oklahomans through this time.”

The calls for mask wearing and improved vaccination rates from health care workers come at a time when hospitals are overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients and have been stretched beyond their limits, leaders of some of the state’s largest health systems said during their news conference Tuesday. 

The number of COVID-19 patients in Oklahoma has rapidly increased as the contagious delta variant takes hold, mainly among unvaccinated people. At the same time, hospitals have lower staffing levels than they did a year ago, hospital leaders said. 

On several days over the past few weeks, Oklahoma City hospitals haven’t had a single bed available, said Dr. Bahar Malakouti, neurohospitalist and stroke medical director at Mercy Hospital. More than 90 percent of patients treated for COVID-19 over the last month were unvaccinated.

Patients crowd emergency rooms waiting for beds to become available while their conditions deteriorate, she said. 

“If you get in a car accident or have a heart attack, need an emergency surgery or yes, even if you have a stroke, there's a chance you might not be able to get the time sensitive care you need,” Malakouti said. 

People might have to wait longer for an ambulance because even ambulance workers are overwhelmed with patients, she said. When ambulance workers do pick up a patient they often struggle to find an emergency room to transport them to, as they’re filled to capacity. 

Though the hospital system used to accept almost all patient transfer requests from other hospitals, Mercy frequently must reject them now, Malakouti said. The hospital system isn’t dealing with a staffing shortage — it’s routinely out of physical beds, she said.

“We simply cannot provide the same level of care for our patients, and their outcomes are suffering,” Malakouti said. “This results in real life, long-term consequences for those patients, for their families and for our community at large. 

“Some of these patients may die or they may have permanent disabilities for the rest of their lives.”

She added: “All our resources are stretched beyond our limits.” 

Hospitals are struggling to meet the staffing levels needed to handle the rising hospitalizations, said Dr. Kersey Winfree, chief medical officer at SSM Health St. Anthony.

“We do not have the staffing levels available to care for patients that we had a year ago,” Winfree said. “This is hard work with a large number of patients needing an unprecedented amount of care.”

Along with the staffing shortage, there’s been little movement in the percentage of Oklahomans who have gotten vaccinated over the last month. About 41.6 percent of Oklahomans have been vaccinated. 

However, the number of Oklahomans who received their first dose of the vaccine ticked up in recent weeks.

In Tulsa County, Saint Francis Health System leaders held a news conference on Monday also pleading with the public to get vaccinated and wear masks. 

Since mid-June, Saint Francis went from about 50 COVID patients to 262, approaching the high of 309 patients in January. 

Patients are younger than they were last winter, said Dr. Ryan Parker, chief of emergency medicine at Saint Francis. The average age of patients hospitalized for COVID is 56, which is more than 10 years younger than what the hospital system previously saw, she said. The average age of patients who need a ventilator is 51. Ninety-one percent of hospitalized COVID patients are unvaccinated, according to data from Saint Francis. 

Dr. Cliff Robertson, president and CEO of Saint Francis Health System, said he’s had some conversations with state officials about staffing issues and possible solutions.

The Oklahoma State Department of Health formed emergency rules last week to allow hospitals to expand bed space, and Stitt approved the rules on Thursday. 

On Friday, Health Commissioner Dr. Lance Frye, in his first press conference in more than a month, stressed the importance of personal responsibility in stopping the spread of the virus. 

Frye said the agency asked the Oklahoma Hospital Association to conduct a survey to determine the number of staffed hospital beds available in the state. The Oklahoma State Department of Health told The Frontier on Tuesday details from the survey are expected to come out later this week. 

Despite federal guidance that recommends people wear masks indoors in areas with high coronavirus transmission, Frye last week called masking a “personal choice” and said Oklahomans should assess their risks when deciding whether to wear one.  

“If you’re not going to rely on people to do what they need to do, I think we’re in trouble,” he said. “Everyone’s responsible for their own health care and their own safety, and we’re encouraging everyone to please do what they need to do to make sure they’re safe and the people around them are safe.” 

Health care workers continued to call on Oklahomans to no longer view COVID through a partisan lense, especially when it comes to mask wearing.

“I think we should go back to mask mandates,” said Regan Wickwire, a registered nurse in the intensive care unit at SSM Health St. Anthony’s Hospital in Oklahoma City. 

Several cities, including Oklahoma City and Tulsa, enforced mask mandates last year, but a statewide mask mandate was never approved by the governor. 

Earlier this year, the state Legislature and governor passed a law prohibiting schools from requiring masks of students and staff, although some districts have done so anyway. 

While health care workers said the fight against COVID should transcend politics, some Democratic lawmakers said more needed to be done by Republicans to reach their constituents that may be opposed to the vaccine or mask wearing. 

“I need to see more from my Republican colleagues because quite frankly we (Democrats) were never going to reach a lot of those folks anyways,” said Forrest Bennett, D-Oklahoma City, who was present at Tuesday’s press conference. 

The post ‘Stretched beyond our limits’: Amid governor’s silence on COVID-19 surge, hospital leaders appeal for public’s help appeared first on The Frontier.