Nurture NJ Was Just the Beginning

A Seed Takes Root: THEN

The United States spends more per capita on maternal health than any other industrialized nation in the world, yet it has the worst maternal health outcomes. In addition, racial disparities in maternal health outcomes are widening. Women in New Jersey are among those who experience the greatest challenges. In 2020-2021:

• Black women in New Jersey were nearly seven times more likely to die in childbirth than were White women.
• For every 100,000 live births in New Jersey, 24 women died, on average, compared to 20 women nationally.

Even more disturbing is the fact that the vast majority of these deaths could have been avoided. More than four out of every five pregnancy-related deaths are preventable.

In 2017, The Nicholson Foundation began a substantial, multi-pronged initiative to see if it could help change this trajectory. The Foundation funded multiple projects at the individual, community, city, and state level to enhance the provision of excellent, equitable maternal healthcare. Many of these projects are still flourishing and have even spawned offshoots that are making a difference in new ways.

At the state level, we worked closely with Governor Phil Murphy’s administration on several initiatives. 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’s goal was to 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 a number of ways. One of the most significant was partnering with the Community Health Acceleration Partnership (CHAP) to fund the development of the Nurture NJ Maternal and Infant Health Strategic Plan. The Plan provided the road map for the state to fundamentally change how it approached maternal healthcare.

The Results: NOW

In 2024, the seeds of that funding effort have borne substantial fruit. As a direct result of Nurture NJ, many initiatives supporting the Plan’s recommendations have been created. Some of these projects have even expanded beyond New Jersey:

• The Alliance supports a thriving ecosystem of organizations and leaders working to improve the outcomes for birthing people and families throughout New Jersey. It does this by amplifying the voices of birth equity leaders; providing flexible funding and technical assistance to community-based organizations, social enterprises, and individuals; and building the infrastructure for cross-sector coordination.
• CHAP also has joined forces with the Pritzker Children’s Initiative and Cambia Health Foundation to launch an initiative called the State of Birth Equity: Catalyzing Place-Based Philanthropy (SOBE). The project’s aim is to support action among funders in states with poor maternal health and birth outcomes, recognizing that philanthropy—with its flexibility, resources, and capacity for innovation—is uniquely positioned to collaborate with state governments to improve the well-being of all families. SOBE is currently working with partners in New Jersey, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Washington, and Washington, DC, to leverage philanthropic resources and unlock opportunities to advance maternal health programs from a range of vantage points. These include integrating perinatal health and reproductive justice strategies in philanthropy, increasing rural maternity access, and strengthening state-level ecosystems of birth workers who are Black, indigenous, and of color. In late 2024, the group also hosted its inaugural State Exchange Convening, a first-of-its-kind gathering to unite private philanthropic and public donors focused on enhancing state-level birth outcomes across the United States.
• In July 2023, Governor Phil Murphy signed a law creating the New Jersey Maternal and Infant Health Innovation Authority to oversee a new Maternal and Infant Health Innovation Center in Trenton. The Authority is governed by a 15-member Board and advised by a Community Advisory Committee.

  The Center, one of the Plan’s key recommendations, will provide a centralized hub for comprehensive reproductive, behavioral health, newborn, and pediatric services; social services and wrap-around supports; and academic research and culturally-centered workforce training. It also will offer an innovation space for researchers and entrepreneurs working to address maternal and infant health issues and support a data collaborative for collecting and analyzing maternal and infant health data.

In addition to these initiatives, the state’s budget each year has included funds for programs and policies that carry out the Plan’s recommendations. The combined efforts of a state budget focused on improving maternal healthcare, multi-sector partnerships creating durable initiatives, and mobilized communities are putting New Jersey on track to meet its goal of making the state the safest and most equitable place to deliver and raise a baby.

Learn More

• Read the other part of this Then & Now blog:
  — Nurture NJ: Making New Jersey the Safest and Most Equitable Place to Have and Raise a Baby
  
• Visit the Nurture NJ website and read the Nurture NJ 2021 Strategic Plan.
• Visit the CHAP and New Jersey Birth Equity Funders Alliance websites and read an overview of The State of Birth Equity initiative.
• Read about the Maternal and Infant Health Innovation Authority and visit the New Jersey Maternal and Infant Health Innovation Center 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.