with just a year left in her tenure first lady Tammy Murphy is pushing out final pieces of her maternal Health agenda hosting her annual nurtur NJ Leadership Summit today in East Brunswick bringing together State and National experts to support New Jersey's mission to become the safest and most Equitable place in the country to raise a baby senior correspondent Joanna gagas reports it's not yet her final bow but as the Murphy Administration nears it and first lady Tammy Murphy took the opportunity today to highlight all they've done in the last seven years to improve maternal and infant Health outcomes in New Jersey becoming the second state in the nation to expand Medicaid coverage to 365 days postpartum which obviously ensures that mothers can continue to receive Health Care in the critical months that follow pregnancy we followed data to action through tools like our first in the nation report card of Hospital maternity care from our New Jersey maternal data center she spoke to a packed room of about 700 people at the 7th annual nurture NJ Leadership Summit highlighting just a handful of the more than 65 bills passed focused on maternal and infant Health we have also become the third state in the nation to ensure Medicaid coverage for Doula care and the first to require community-based Doula training to receive reimbursement Murphy was one of several speakers to extol the state's improvement from 47th in the nation from Eternal outcomes to now 28th and from 32nd in breastfeeding rates to now 18th while also saying the work has only just begun we're not satisfied with being 28th or 18th we want to be first or second so we've got a lot of work to do and while those national rankings have improved it's harder to know just how much progress has been made here in the state as we push these policies through are they going to do what they're intended to do and once they're passed are they actually going to be actioned that's the question that remains on the minds of so many folks working in this space now Mia the maternal infant Health Innovation Authority is working on a maternal review report to begin tracking that data but they say that's a complicated process we are working with the rer School of Public Health on an evaluation study and we are beginning to look at all of the nurture and J strategies and initiatives and beginning to measure them and one of them where we've seen real increases Paid Family Leave we've seen a 70% increase in women and men using paid family leave since the legislation was enacted in 2019 other efforts like the nurse home visitation program that promises a home visit within two weeks for every birthing person are rolling out much more slowly sadly missing women like Drea Austin who died of postpartum complications just two weeks after delivering the program is going to be fully up and running in four years in totals so we are we're adding on U more counties this year starting in January uh the the issue and I know you'll understand this is if we go too fast and we don't have the nurses and we can't provide the service we not only will fall down we will ruin the program and on top of that um we won't be able to benefit from Best Practices learned so we are learning as we go along and as we move forward we will we will be stronger and stronger in every County where we add on concerns were raised today about the perinatal Workforce that's a vulnerable population in and of itself we're focusing on policy but we also need to make sure that we're focusing on other areas like preventing burnout for the individuals who are doing this kind of work if we were to nurture the providers we would be looking at this perinatal Workforce that we are so desperately trying to grow scale and hold on to but without nurturing we're not going to get very far Lisa assari says that's a major focus at Mia women need social support you know they need social support so they need to feel that they have Advocates they have supporters they have people that will assist them and so I think that much of that work is being done as we look to build this perinatal Workforce and with the creation of the first in the nation Innovation Authority it's work they hope will continue long after this Administration has moved on in East Brunswick I'm Joanna gagas and J spotl news [Music]