Day 61: The UA Students Building a Lifeline for Arkansas Moms

Imagine it's day 61.

Your baby is two months old. You haven't slept more than a few hours at a time in weeks. Your body is still healing, and some days you don't feel like yourself at all.

If Medicaid covered your pregnancy, this is the day that coverage ends.

In Arkansas, that isn't hypothetical. Arkansas is the only state that still ends postpartum Medicaid coverage at 60 days. Every other state now covers moms for a full year after birth.

In May 2026 alone, 2,173 Arkansas moms lost their Medicaid at day 60. Only 145 of them had other health coverage on record.

A team of University of Arkansas students believes the months after that cutoff are exactly where moms need the most support. So they're building a way to give it to them. They call it Kinera.

Arkansas ranks near the bottom of the country on almost every measure of maternal and infant health:

That last number is the one the team keeps coming back to. Most of the attention goes to pregnancy and delivery. But a third of these deaths happen later, often after a mom's coverage has already ended and fewer people are checking in.

The idea started with Tirth Amin, the team's project manager.

"I'm the type of guy that drinks a cup of coffee and scrolls through NPR," he said.

The week before the team's first brainstorming meeting, he read a March of Dimes report showing how many Arkansas counties had become maternity care deserts. His sister, a nurse practitioner who has worked at UAMS and Arkansas Children's, had already given him a close look at the problem. He brought it to the team, and it stuck.

The team includes Tirth, Ryan John, Shreya Bhalla, Ignacio Balderrama Montano and Peiyu Li. Wesley Smith, senior program manager at the McMillon Innovation Studio, supervises them.

For Peiyu, the connection was personal.

"As a woman, I feel a strong sense of empathy for these mothers and the challenges they face,” she said.

They're working through Enactus, a global student organization that helps students build businesses aimed at social good. Its roots run deep in Northwest Arkansas. Sam Walton was an early champion of Students in Free Enterprise, the program that later became Enactus, and the University of Arkansas started its own chapter in 1998. This year, with support from the Walton Family Foundation, Enactus returned to the region through a pilot at the University of Arkansas, John Brown University and NWACC.

Before building anything, the team spent six weeks in the field. They contacted about 100 health care providers and workers. They attended two health events, visited sites in Huntsville from WIC to Open Arms, and talked with partners, a NICU nurse and moms.

Ignacio interviewed a mother who had given birth three times. After her Medicaid coverage ended, postpartum depression set in.

"She had no support at all," Ignacio said. "She kind of just had to find a way to do it on her own."

The providers they surveyed pointed to the same barriers again and again. Fourteen of the 15 who answered named transportation. In parts of Arkansas, the nearest hospital that delivers babies can be more than 28 miles away, and Medicaid covers only eight rides a year.

Even when care comes to town, moms don't always show up. The team behind UAMS' mobile health unit told them trust was their biggest barrier. Many moms are afraid to ask for help, even from the people trying to give it.

And the help that does exist is hard to find. Free rides, WIC and doula coverage are all out there, but moms often never hear about them. Most learn about resources by word of mouth, from one friend to the next.

The team also learned the problem isn't limited to rural or low-income families. It reaches moms no matter where they live or how much they make. But it hits hardest where care is farthest away.

The name comes from two ideas: "kin," meaning family, and "era," a new era for the family.

Kinera isn't an app yet. Right now, it's an idea: one place where a mom can check in on how she's doing, find the help that already exists near her, and connect with other moms who have been there.

Shreya described the moment they want to change.

"Right now it's kind of just like, 'Oh my God, what do I do? Where do I go?'" she said. "We want to change that so the next thought they have is Kinera."

The idea has already won $2,500 at the Enactus NWA Entrepreneurship Summit. But the team says the real work is just starting, and they don't want to build it alone.

None of the team members get paid. They don't get class credit or volunteer hours. They interviewed for a spot on the team before they even knew what problem they'd be solving.

"They're getting absolutely nothing out of it besides feeding their passion," Wesley said.

They also know a problem this big won't be solved in a semester, so they measure success differently.

"Even having that opportunity to help one mom through that tough time, that's enough of a success for us," Ryan said.

Tirth put it even more simply.

"Even a very tiny little bit of success could mean one life that is changed forever."

So far, the team has mostly heard from doctors, nurses and health workers. What they're missing is the most important voice: moms.

Before they build anything, they're heading to Madison County, the closest maternity care desert to campus, to sit down with mothers in person. And they want to hear from moms across Northwest Arkansas too.

If you've had a baby in Arkansas, your story could shape what Kinera becomes. What did you need in that first year? What was missing? Who did you wish you could call?

Reach the team at [email protected].

Somewhere in Arkansas, a mom is about to reach day 61. This team wants to make sure she has somewhere to turn.