Nurture NJ: Making New Jersey the Safest and Most Equitable Place to Have and Raise a Baby

For 20 years, The Nicholson Foundation worked to advance meaningful change in safety net service systems in New Jersey. The 2021 book, Changing Systems, Changing Lives: Reflecting on 20 Years, recounts this journey through stories and related text that feature 15 exemplary projects and initiatives. This “Then & Now” blog series highlights a few of these projects—what we funded and why, and how these projects continue to thrive in ways that benefit the health and well-being of individuals, families, and communities.

Nurture NJ: THEN

In 2017, the Foundation began looking for grantmaking opportunities at the intersection of two longstanding priorities—health and early childhood. A logical opportunity soon emerged.

Maternal health was an important public health problem in New Jersey that disproportionately affected populations of color: Between 2014 and 2016 non-Hispanic Black women had about seven times more pregnancy-related deaths than did non-Hispanic White women. Serious injuries during childbirth, such as hemorrhage, told a similar story.

Fortunately, it was possible to prevent many causes of maternal death and injury. As we explored ways to best focus our grantmaking, one route to improving maternal outcomes became abundantly clear. This route was an unwavering focus on equity to ensure that all women had access to—and received—excellent and culturally appropriate healthcare before, during, and after pregnancy.

We ultimately developed a variety of partnerships with the state, other foundations, and other groups, with the aim of reaching women who had not previously received concerted and culturally appropriate attention. The result was a multi-faceted initiative consisting of distinct, yet complementary projects operating at different levels, including the individual, community, city, and state.At the state level, we worked closely with Governor Phil Murphy’s administration on several projects. First Lady Tammy Snyder Murphy had made maternal health her signature issue and she reached out to a number of partners and funders, including The Nicholson Foundation, to help plan and carry out Nurture NJ, a multi-sector statewide campaign to improve maternal and infant health.

Nurture NJ had an ambitious goal: Reduce the maternal mortality rate by 50% and ensure equity in care and in perinatal outcomes for mothers and infants of all races and ethnicities. The Foundation supported Nurture NJ in four ways:

  • We partnered with the Community Health Acceleration Partnership (CHAP) to fund the development of the Nurture NJ Maternal and Infant Health Strategic Plan. The Plan, released in January 2021, provided the road map for the state to fundamentally change how it approached maternal healthcare. The Plan included recommendations in nine cross-cutting action areas for key stakeholders, who included State departments and agencies, State leadership, academia, business and employers, funders, the health sector, service providers, and community.
  • We created and implemented a strategic communications campaign focused on launching the Plan to extend its reach to healthcare providers working with women who were pregnant, especially those in communities of color.
  • We supported family festivals in Atlantic City, Camden, Jersey City, Newark, Paterson, and Trenton. These festive neighborhood events gave families an opportunity to have fun and also connect with local social service providers, especially those providing support to expecting parents and those with young children.
  • We funded a nationally recognized expert to help the Department of Health substantially reorganize and update New Jersey’s infrastructure for gathering and reporting maternal morbidity and mortality data. These data are a critical foundation for evidence-based strategies to improve maternal health.
What is CHAP?
CHAP is a philanthropic organization working at the intersection of government and community, bringing lessons from years of global systems-change work to the field of maternal health.

Based on specific recommendations in the Nurture NJ Strategic Plan, Governor Murphy’s 2022 budget included funding for a number of maternal health programs and policies. These included expanding Medicaid coverage from 60 to 365 days postpartum, increasing funding for pregnancy and reproductive health services for undocumented mothers, a pilot program to provide housing support and additional services for eligible pregnant women, a doula registry to support development of the workforce, and an analysis of the areas with the highest rates of maternal and infant morbidity and mortality.

Nurture NJ: NOW

Nurture NJ continues to have a substantial impact on New Jersey’s ability to reduce inequities in maternal healthcare and to improve outcomes. Each year, the state’s budget has included funds to support the work of the Plan. The state’s FY 2025 budget includes more than $34 million to advance nine recommendations in the Plan:

  • $23 million to expand Family Connects NJ, the statewide universal home nurse visitation program for every new mother and baby (Recommendation 5.19)
  • $3.2 million for the operation of the newly established Maternal and Infant Health Innovation Authority (Recommendation 3.3)
  • $2.9 million to become the first state in the nation to cover delivery fees for online WIC purchases (Recommendation 5.5)
  • $2.5 million to ensure all families have access to essential products including feminine hygiene products, diapers, and more
  • $2.25 million for perinatal workforce training and education (Recommendations 5.13, 7.4, and 7.15)
  • $2 million to support innovative Nurture NJ initiatives
  • $1.05 million to support Early Childhood Specialists in the Connecting NJ hubs (Recommendation 7.18)
  • $213,000 to develop a nurse tuition assistance program to support Family Connects NJ nurses (Recommendations 5.13 and 5.19)
  • $204,000 to enhance efforts to obtain and assess maternal health data (Recommendation 6.3)

Nurture NJ and the related maternal healthcare projects that we and others funded are important building blocks for effective systems change in this arena. They show what can happen when government, philanthropy, and community come together with a common purpose.
 

Learn More

  • Read the other part of this Then & Now blog:
    — Nurture NJ: Was Just the Beginning
  • Visit the Nurture NJ website and read the Nurture NJ Strategic Plan.
  • Visit the CHAP website.

  • Order a free copy of Changing Systems, Changing Lives: Reflecting on 20 Years. This book describes the 20-year journey of The Nicholson Foundation.

REQUEST YOUR FREE BOOK NOW
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