Doulas Hired In Newark, Other Cities To Fight Baby Mortality Gap – Newark, NJ Patch

NEWARK, NJ — Dozens of doulas and other health workers are being hired across New Jersey to battle a race-based infant mortality gap that some have called “shameful.”

On Monday, the New Jersey Department of Health (NJDOH) announced that it has provided funding to hire 77 outreach workers — 40 doulas, eight “community health workers” and 29 community health worker supervisors — in an effort to boost the well-being of mothers-to-be in the Garden State.

The round of funding is part of the department’s $4.7 million investment in the “Healthy Women, Healthy Families program,” launched in response to an alarming disparity in black and white infant deaths that may stand as high as three-to-one, officials said.

So far, several babies in New Jersey have been born with the aid of the newly hired health workers, NJDOH officials said. Out of 63 women participating in the pilot program, 19 have delivered their child with the support of a doula.

As a result, many underserved minority women now have a chance to get crucial health services “in their own backyards,” state Health Commissioner Shereef Elnahal said.

“Community health workers and doulas provide support and connections to resources that can greatly improve a women’s health and likelihood she will have an optimal birth,” Elnahal said.

Eight community-based grantees are implementing the Health Women, Health Families and doula pilot programs, according to the NJDOH:

  • The Partnership for Maternal & Child Health of Northern New Jersey (Bergen, Morris, Passaic, Union and Hudson counties; cities of Paterson and Jersey City)
  • Central Jersey Family Health Consortium (Middlesex, Somerset, Hunterdon and Mercer counties; city of Trenton)
  • Greater Newark Healthcare Coalition, Inc. (Essex County and the municipalities of East Orange, Irvington and Newark)
  • Project Self-Sufficiency of Sussex County (Sussex and Warren counties)
  • Southern New Jersey Perinatal Cooperative (Atlantic, Cape May, Salem Gloucester, Cumberland, Burlington and Camden counties; cities of Atlantic City and Camden)
  • The Children’s Home Society of New Jersey (Monmouth and Ocean counties)
  • Children’s Futures (Trenton)
  • SPAN Parent Advocacy (Newark)

In September 2018, the state’s Legislative Black Caucus raised attention about a highly skewed mortality rate in New Jersey, with one of its members calling the situation “devastating.”

The numbers speak for themselves, lawmakers said:

  • The overall rate of mortality in New Jersey is 4.8 deaths per 1,000 live births
  • For black babies, the rate is 9.7 deaths per 1,000 births, compared to 3 per 1,000 for white babies.
  • Of the maternal deaths in New Jersey, 46.5% are black mothers, compared to 13.7% Latina mothers and 12.8% white mothers

After NJDOH officials released data on the infant mortality gap in the spring of 2018, New Jersey’s First Lady Tammy Murphy spearheaded a statewide effort dubbed Nurture NJ, a multi-agency campaign focused on battling the gap with education and health services.

“Every mother deserves an equal chance at having a healthy child,” Murphy said. “Through the Nurture NJ initiative, the administration is making strides in bringing services to communities that need greater access to care, in order to reduce shameful disparities that have persisted in our state for too long.”

Here’s how the program works, according to the NJDOH:

“Under Nurture NJ, the department’s ‘Healthy Women, Healthy Family’ initiative and doula pilot targets high-risk populations, which includes those who are low-income and/or uninsured, women with chronic health conditions and multiple social or economic stressors, victims of domestic violence, those impacted by mental health issues, alcoholism and substance abuse, women with minimal social supports and women with unintended pregnancies. These women on average attend fewer prenatal visits and are more likely to experience adverse pregnancy outcomes. Their families are less likely to access consistent, comprehensive preventive and primary care services, and are less likely receive quality care.”

More than 11,000 women have been screened since July 2018, and 8,500 were connected to programs like Home Visiting and Healthy Start. Most of these women were pregnant, and nearly 40 percent reside in communities with “high rates of black infant mortality,” the NJDOH stated.

Hiring more health workers isn’t the only way that New Jersey officials are tackling the infant death gap, officials said.

On Monday, the NJDOH announced that seven partners have agreed to administer 17-alpha hydroxyprogesterone (17P) through funding that the department has secured from the CDC as part of a Preventative Health Services block grant.

“17P is proven to prevent preterm births in certain women,” NJDOH officials stated. “To ensure maternal care providers have an understanding of how this intervention can be used to improve birth outcomes, the Department, with perinatologists and obstetric experts, will offer Grand Rounds at hospitals and medical societies to areas of the state with high infant mortality rates.”

In addition, to help reduce “unintended pregnancies” in the state, the department is increasing access to long-term, reversible contraception (LARC) as a contraception option for women, officials said.

“Thanks to the $7.5 million in state family planning funding that Governor Phil Murphy restored and has continued to fund, the New Jersey Family Planning League has seen an increase in more than 600 women taking advantage of this conception option, which includes intrauterine devices (IUDs) and hormonal implants,” the NJDOH stated.

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