Steve Adubato is joined by First Lady of New Jersey, Tammy Murphy, to discuss the Nurture NJ initiative to improve maternal and infant health outcomes, the importance of quality childcare for ages birth to three, and the connection between COVID-19 and systemic racism. 

First Lady of New Jersey, Tammy Murphy, discusses Nurture NJ, a statewide awareness campaign that started in January 2019, to help address the inequities in our healthcare system as they pertain to maternal and infant mortality and morbidity. She adds that New Jersey is 47^th in the United States for maternal death, and the United States is 55^th in the world. The campaign will help raise awareness for this issue, how it affects communities of color, and ways they hope to fix it. She says, “The discrepancies between women of color and others are appalling. If you’re a black woman in the state of New Jersey, you are seven times more likely than a white woman to suffer or die from maternity related complications. And if you’re a black child, you are three times more likely than a white child to die before your first birthday.”  

Murphy says the New Jersey Pandemic Relief Fund has raised over $38 million over the past seven months. She adds, “We’ve had nearly 61,000 donors at this point, those donors range from private individuals giving one dollar to people giving multi-million dollar gifts. And they represent every county in New Jersey, every state in the United States, and 14 international countries.” She says “every single dollar we raise goes directly out the door. There’s no loss there.” Right now, she says they are currently working in the areas of the digital divide, food security, minority and women-owned businesses, and child care.