Jackson Free Press

Jarvis Dortch, 28, always thought he'd be a lawyer. With a bachelor's degree in political science from Jackson State University, Dortch headed to Howard University in Washington, D.C., to study law. A year later, he realized that the vision for his future had changed.

"I remember a couple of months before I went to Howard, thinking, 'Do I really want to go to law school?'" Dortch says. He found he couldn't answer people when they asked him why he wanted to be a lawyer. "It was just a plan that I was doing on autopilot."

He envisioned working in a policy role, and the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program fulfilled that goal. Since 2006, Dortch has worked as a communications coordinator for the organization, which aims to improve health care for all Mississippians, "especially those whose health is threatened by poverty, racism, malnutrition and violence," according to its Web site (mhap.org). For the past two years, he's been getting the word out on the dangers of smoking and helped to get a cigarette tax passed by the Mississippi Legislature.

"It shouldn't have taken as long as it did," he says, but having a former tobacco lobbyist for a governor made it an uphill battle.

Today, Dortch finds himself smack in the middle of the health-insurance reform debate.

"In Mississippi, you see things that are crazy, especially with the Medicaid program," he says. While other states are trying to expand the program to help more people, Mississippi is constantly trying to cut back. 
 "You get kind of frustrated," he admits, with all of the misinformation about health-care reform. Even his mother-in-law (he and his wife, Stephanie, married in 2007), who works at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, is saying reform must be bad because that's all she's hearing. "She's in favor of reform," Dortch says, but is being bombarded with anti-reform e-mails, columns and ads.

"The last month or so, (MHAP has) been focusing on getting out a positive message about reform," Dortch says. "Conservatives have a pretty well-oiled machine for getting their message out, whether it's talk radio, the Internet (or) FOX news." MHAP is working to counter the conservative rhetoric, but it's challenging, Dortch says, when there are so many myths and scare tactics in circulation.

This fall, Dortch will be taking on a new project, Health Help for Kids, as program manager. The program aims to help families navigate the public health-care system to get the best care for their children.

"The way we see it, we're going to have health-care reform some kind of way. People are going to need help navigating their choices," Dortch says.