As the pandemic dragged on in the winter of 2021 first lady Tammy Murphy keyed in on what she called a “crisis” growing worse — the state’s maternal mortality rate, with Black women seven times more likely to die of maternity-related complications than white women. Launching her Nurture NJ program, she set an ambitious goal to halve the rate in five years.
We caught up with the first lady in Black Maternal Health Week. Noting that Gov. Phil Murphy “has signed over 42 pieces of legislation in this area to make sure that we are doing everything to establish best practices,” she acknowledged the difficulty of addressing the complicated issues involved during the pandemic. “I know we are moving the needle; it’s not the easiest thing to quantify because maternal mortality and infant mortality are lagging indicators… But there’s a lot of indicators that things are going in the right direction,” she said.
