By Mary Barr Mann, Montclair State University News, February 16, 2021
One year after headlining Maternal Health Day activities at Montclair State, New Jersey First Lady Tammy Snyder Murphy recently unveiled the Nurture NJ Strategic Plan, with the aim of “making New Jersey the safest and most equitable place in the nation to give birth and raise a baby.”
Behind the scenes, academics and practitioners such as Nastassia Davis, an assistant professor in the School of Nursing; Kaitlin Mulcahy, associate director of the Center for Autism and Early Childhood Mental Health (CAECMH); and Jill Wodnick, a doula who has been the cornerstone of much of Montclair State’s maternal health efforts through CAECMH, were among those interviewed to help craft the state’s strategic plan. And, through their work at the University, they will be among an army of health practitioners and educators across the state helping to see its goals to fruition.
According to statistics cited in Murphy’s plan, New Jersey is currently ranked 47th in the nation for maternal deaths and has one of the widest racial disparities for both maternal and infant mortality: “A Black mother in New Jersey is seven times more likely than a white mother to die from maternity-related complications, and a Black baby is over three times more likely than a white baby to die before his or her first birthday.”
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